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In the body, the SAID principle rules all. The SAID principle is simple: Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Franklin Henry proposed this concept in his hypothesis on motor learning. However, it applies to all of the systems in the body, including the muscles, nervous system, and connective tissues. The concept is straightforward-if you can apply enough stress to the muscles and the nervous system through intense exercise, the body will adapt to this stress by improving strength and muscular hypertrophy-an increase in size of the muscles. Over time, the application of additional stress to these systems of the body will result in large- scale adaptations in strength, hypertrophy, and connective tissue integrity. This is called progressive overload.
Thomas Delorme pioneered the concept of progressive overload while rehabilitating soldiers after World War II. Progressive overload is the key concept behind all strength and hypertrophy training, including both barbell and bodyweight training. Generally speaking, you must progressively add more weight to the barbell in order to increase strength and hypertrophy. Likewise, with bodyweight exercises you must find a way to make the exercises more difficult in ardor to progressively overload the body and gain strength and hypertrophy. In bodyweight exercises this is executed through manipulating leverage.
There are some differences between barbells and bodyweight exercises. However, muscular force is force on a basic level. Thus, you can see increases in both strength and muscle mass by utilizing progressive bodyweight exercises to overload the muscles and nervous system. Correctly applied bodyweight exercises are comparable to weights for strength and hypertrophy in the upper body. On the other hand, bodyweight exercises are slightly inferior to weights for strength and hypertrophy in the lower body. This is another key concept to keep in mind when assessing and constructing a routine toward your goals.
Leverage is a mechanical advantage gained by using a lever. Far instance, a see-saw is a simple form of a lever. If you place an adult on one end of the see-saw and a child on the other end, the see-saw will inevitably tilt toward the adult. However, as the adult moves toward the middle of the see-saw-in effect decreasing the mechanical advantage of the weight difference-the see-saw may begin to move up and down. The goal
of advanced bodyweight strength training is to decrease leverage, which reduces the mechanical advantage that muscles have during an exercise, thus increasing the demand of force on the muscles to execute certain positions or movements. This is how astounding strength can be built without the use of external weight. Decreasing leverage in progressive bodyweight exercises is primarily employed through two different methods: changing the body position and changing the muscle length.
For instance, both planche and front lever have changes in body position to make the exercise more difficult. Some of the planche progressions are seen in this illustration sequence. As the body is extended-from the tuck position, to the straddle position, to the straight body position- the exercise becomes progressively harder. Your bones are the levers, your joints act as fulcrums, and your muscles act to apply force. The muscles apply forces to the bones (levers) that rotate around the joints (fulcrums) to move weight against gravity and to manipulate external objects in your environment.
In the case of the planche progression above, the center of mass of the body is shifted further away from the shoulder by straightening the body. This increases the torque on the shoulder, which is the force applied around an axis of rotation. In physics, Torque = Force * Distance. Thus, moving the distance of the center of the mass away from the shoulder will increase the torque. Since our bodies are built on these leverage methods, all forces on the muscles can be thought of in terms of torque on the muscles at certain joint angles. This is the basis of biomechanics.
Muscles are strongest at their resting length because that is the point where the maximum number of cross bridges can be formed. A very basic explanation is that cross bridges are formed when the contractile components of the muscle-myosin and actin-overlap, and the myosin mechanically pulls against the actin, which contracts the muscle. Thus, if we shorten or lengthen muscles and then place a lighter load on the body, we stimulate an adaptation as if we were using a heavier weight.
The reason why this works is because maximal or near-maximal contractions stimulate similar neural and muscular adaptations, regardless of the force that is being placed on the muscles. For example, performing decline bicep curls while laying back is much more difficult than regular standing bicep curls or preacher curls. In decline
bicep curls, the arm is moved slightly behind the body, which places the biceps into a lengthened position. The lengthened position ensures that there is less overlap between the contractile fibers within the muscles, which means you are unable to use the same amount of weight as the other curl variations. However, the strength and mass adaptations that are gained are similar, even though you are using less weight in that movement.
Similar phenomena occur in many bodyweight exercises. For instance, pull-ups are a prime example. There are many videos of people performing pull-ups without utilizing full range of motion; they barely get their chin over the bar and they do not fully reach to a straight-arm hang position at the completion of the movement.
The reason why people shorten the range of motion is because the exercise often becomes more difficult at the edges of the range of the exercise. Hence, shortening the range of motion allows them to perform more repetitions, which appears more impressive. However, there is some truth to the notion that people who shorten range of motion are cheating themselves out of the full benefit of performance, strength, and hypertrophy. The phenomenon of placing muscles into short or lengthened states at the edge of their range of motion is termed active insufficiency or passive insufficiency, respectively. This is illustrated in the muscle length-tension curve below.
Active tension is the force you generate by voluntarily contracting a muscle. Passive tension is what occurs when you stretch a muscle out really far, to the edge of its range of motion. At this point, connective tissues such as ligaments and joint capsules have tension applied to them. Receptors within the muscle (called muscle spindles) provide feedback to the nervous system, telling it that the muscle is lengthening too much. This alerts the nervous system to activate the muscles, which causes the body to contract the muscle involuntarily. This is why your muscles contract when you move them toward end range in flexibility work such as stretching.
Placing a muscle in the short range or at long range-where the active force you can generate is the lowest-allows us to generate a strength training stimulus without the use of additional weight. Advanced strength movements on rings where the arms are held perfectly straight (such as in the iron cross) is a perfect
example. The straight-arm position places the biceps at near maximal length and thus requires significant amounts of strength and mass to perform the movement safely.
In the planche, the anterior deltoid (the primary shoulder muscle) is placed in a more extended position, compared to exercises such as an overhead press. There is less mechanical advantage and the body adapts to this stress by increasing strength and muscle mass. Hence, gymnasts who can perform the planche typically have large shoulder muscles and exceptionally high strength. There are several anecdotes of gymnasts capable of bench-pressing twice their bodyweight when they can perform the planche having never bench-pressed in their lives!
A strong familiarity of common training concepts will be important to subsequent chapters. The following are some of the common concepts most important to building a routine.
The repetition continuum has strength at one end and endurance at the other. The strength side is attained through low repetitions and heavier weight or higher intensity where a 1 repetition maximum ( 1 RM) elicits the most strength. Endurance occurs with less weight or less intensity and more repetitions. There are three very important points to take away from the repetition continuum:
Thus, we come to a couple of conclusions. For a strength-biased sport, you want to prioritize strength training over metabolic or endurance training. For endurance sports, you want to concurrently train strength and endurance. For sports with a mix of strength and endurance, you want to concurrently train in both areas but the proportion of each may vary. However, this does not mean that if you want to maximize your training you should only perform 100% of one particular area. Too much specialization is inefficient. In general, if you are going to cross-train strength and endurance, but have a focus on one portien over another, an 80j20 split tends to work very well. This means that 80% of your training should be dedicated toward the particular area that you want to develop the mosc, and 20% of your training can be devoted to the other pares. For strength athletes, this means there should be an 80:20 or 4:1 ratio of strength workouts to endurance workouts. For endurance athletes, this means.there should be a 4:1 ratio of endurance workouts to strength workouts.
What you may often find from a split of this ratio is that the effect may be more beneficial thanjust 100% focus on one particular area of training. For example, some low-level aerobic work for a strength athlete can help increase recovery for strength training, thus allowing you to train harder. Likewise, strength work for an endurance athlete increases efficiency, which tends to lead toward increases in performance. These concepts will be further explored in the cross-training chapter.
The knowledge behind the construction of exercise routines in subsequent chapters will rely heavily on understanding these basic concepts. You can consider the construction of a routine a "puzzle;' made up of many different pieces. Your specific goals provide an oudine far the puzzle, and the pieces are put together within that framework.
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