If you recall your days as a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, you will remember the words, “Be prepared.” In recent years “be prepared” or words having a similar meaning, are being used in an effort to prevent disease and other social problems. However, “be prepared” applies equally well to weight training and specific types of sports training.
To be prepared for strength training means that your body is physically capable of correctly and safely doing the exercise. You may believe that this is why you lift weights–to get your body in shape to do the exercises. To a certain extent this is true and there are examples of people who have trained themselves without advance preparation. In such cases, the athletes had the right genetics, adhered strictly to the basic principles of weight training, or in many cases used drugs.
Those who are genetically gifted are usually easy to identify. Their bodies respond very rapidly to an exercise and they achieve great strength and mass. What is especially obvious is that they appear to do this regardless of how they work out! However, the number of such individuals is very small. For most individuals the path to the top is slow and arduous. There are NO shortcuts.
Today, many athletes want instant success. They graduate to complex exercises and heavy weights very quickly, only to come down with serious injuries. Thus, to make progress, you have two alternatives: go slowly, easily and safely or push it hard and increase the odds for getting an injury.
There may, however, be a compromise by “being prepared.” This means that you first prepare your body before doing a particular exercise or before doing a particular type of training. In essence, you must develop all the qualities needed to successfully do the exercise or program. When this is done, each new exercise or program is within your capabilities.
This concept derives from a new but not necessarily successful trend in the training of athletes. Most athletes, in order to improve in their sport, play the sport more and more. The main philosophy is that if you want to become better in your sport, you must play more. This is why there are so many individuals who play only one or at best, two sports.
Scientific research and practice has shown that it is much more effective to first condition yourself, i.e., prepare yourself to participate in the sport. A few concrete examples will help illustrate this concept. For example, in learning the kip, the basic movement in gymnastics, you have difficulty in raising and holding yourself on the arms on the high bar, parallel bars, or horse. After many hundred or more attempts, you eventually develop sufficient strength and the ability to do the movement, even though it is still not perfected.
A much more effective way is to first develop sufficient arm, hip and abdominal strength in separate exercises and then attempt to learn the movement. In this way you cut down greatly the amount of time involved and there is less chance of injury because your body is prepared for the stresses that are involved. In essence, you prepared yourself to learn and master the skill.
An analogous situation is seen in aerobic cyclic sports such as running. To improve your cardiovascular and respiratory systems, you take up running but soon come down with an injury. Keep in mind that at any one time 25-50% of all runners are not running because of injuries sustained in running. The average frequency of these injuries is 5 months! The injury usually occurs because of the inability to withstand the forces involved in every footstrike, especially if you are a heel hitter. However, the injury can also occur if you do not have effective running technique or the muscle strength necessary for increasing speed or distance safely.
To be prepared for running, you must first master the proper way to run to minimize the landing forces to help prevent injury and increase efficiency. Equally important is strengthening the muscles involved in running as they are used in running. When your muscles are stronger in the main joint actions seen in running, the running becomes easier and faster and, as a result, gives you greater cardiovascular and respiratory system benefits.
Similar situations exist in team sports as, for example, basketball in which the main injuries involve the hamstrings and lower back. Yet it is rare to find a basketball team that does exercises such as the glute-ham-gastroc raise or high pulley leg pulldowns (pawback) to prevent hamstring injuries or back raises to prevent back injuries. Most do not even have a Yessis back machine, also known as the Glute Ham Developer as it was originally named by Dr. Yessis. This is why it is common to find players on high school, collegiate and professional teams eventually coming down with an injury. But, with prior physical preparation the number of such injuries would be cut down greatly, if not eliminated. In addition the players would be able to play more effectively and successfully.
Understand that by doing special physical preparation in advance of playing, not only would injuries be prevented (or decreased greatly) but it would increase your playing time and improve your performance. Merely playing the game does not get you stronger, quicker, faster or develop your ability to jump higher. There may be some increases in your physical abilities from the first day of practice, and from playing the game and doing drills. But the amount of development soon levels off and remains below your potential.
This is the main reason why on almost all teams you do not see the best players playing their best. To truly be at your best you must first optimally develop your technique, strength, speed, explosiveness, etc, and then incorporate them into your game skills and game performance.
Many injuries occur in weight training where “be prepared” also applies. You lift weights to become stronger, which should be sufficient to prevent injuries and to a good extent, this is true. However, there are many exercises that can be done more effectively to bring about greater gains sooner and more safely. Understand that the number of injuries in weight training s quite high.
The squat exercise can serve as a good illustration. In order to do this exercise safely and effectively, you must first have strong back muscles capable of maintaining the arch in the lower back throughout the exercise. You need ample flexibility in the hip joints to allow you to go to the thigh parallel position without losing the arch in the lower back. You also need sufficient flexibility in the ankle joint to allow for a full descent and to keep your feet flat on the ground. The latter gives you much greater balance and knee safety in comparison to having your heels raised.
For prior preparation you should do several different exercises including good mornings, back raises, lunges and calf raises. For most individuals it would take 1-2 months of doing these exercises before sufficient strength and flexibility is developed to do the squat correctly and effectively. With this prior development it would then take only a few sessions to master the technique needed for a safe and effective squat.
The lunge is another exercise to illustrate the need for prior preparation. In the true lunge you take a long stride with the trunk erect and the rear leg straight but relaxed. In the bottom position your rear leg should be straight and almost touching the floor with your trunk still perfectly upright and your front leg bent 90 degrees supporting most of your weight.
Before you can get into this position, however, you need great flexibility in the hip joints, especially of the hip joint flexors, good lower back strength and stability of the entire body. Because of this, it takes many weeks until you develop the ability to do a full, complete classic lunge.
If you first develop sufficient flexibility and strength in other exercises, learning the correct lunge would be relatively simple and fast. Because many individuals avoid such prior preparation, they do a short lunge, which is analogous to a split squat. This is a relatively easy exercise but does not produce anything close to the development that a classic lunge can give you.
Even the deadlift exercise is not exempt from prior preparation. In the early stages of training the back and legs are usually strong enough to handle light weights quite safely. However, as you get into heavier weights, it becomes all the more difficult to hold the back arched and the barbell in the hands.
The lower back must support the weight and your fingers must hold the bar to allow you to raise the weight. If you do not have sufficient strength of the finger muscles, you will develop wrist or hand problems that will prevent you from doing this great exercise. To prevent this from happening you must first strengthen the wrists, fingers and hands with Exer Rings or other equipment before you begin using heavy weights. You may also need stronger back and shoulder joint muscles to hold the shoulders up and back and the spine in position.
In regard to the mid-section, without sufficient low back and abdominal strength, you will be unable to stabilize the mid-section when doing heavy weight exercises, especially exercises in which you handle the weight overhead. Without sufficient strength of the internal and external obliques and erector spinae muscles there is a strong tendency to lose balance and to rotate the torso when doing various exercises. When this occurs the chances of lower back injuries are increased greatly. With sufficient strength of the rotational abdominal and low back muscles, such injuries can be prevented and at the same time make the exercises much safer.
Thus, to be a great athlete, be prepared for what you must do. You must have good technique and body strength before playing a sport or doing specific exercises or types of training. This is necessary for the prevention of injury and for making progress in your sport. In this way you will speed up your progress greatly and, most importantly, make your playing better than ever.
For more information see Kinesiology of Exercise and Build a Better Athlete, Explosive Running, Kinesiology of Exercise, Explosive Basketball Training, Explosive Golf, and Explosive Tennis by Dr. Michael Yessis.