OK sports fans, you’re friendly neighborhood fitness giant IDEA supports this sort of stupidity:
Train Fast
With the exception of power-lifting, few sports are performed slowly. While many individuals would argue that performing movements quickly in the weight room may be dangerous, speed is not the primary factor that would determine an injury; it is control. Athletes do not get hurt because they are going too fast; they get hurt because they are going fast and are out of control. If clients want to be fast, you must train them fast.
Reading this made me laugh for like 10 minutes. And then it made me really, really, MAD.
First of all, power lifting is slow because the weights are so heavy they can’t be moved fast. These athletes commonly attempt one repetition maximums to see how strong they are in three different exercises, the bench press, the squat and the dead-lift.
Training fast in the weight room will not make you fast on the playing field unless training fast in the weight room makes you stronger (which it will sort of) and doesn’t injure you (which it will not sort of).
Deep down inside I think anyone who reads this article knows it’s just plain stupid.
If you want to be fast at a sport or activity you need SKILL and a high level of skill at that sport or activity and that takes practice. After you have developed great skill, you need great (or greater) muscular strength.
You can’t make your 4-cylinder car faster by driving it fast. No. You have to take out the engine and replace it with a beefier one.
But we can’t take our muscles and nerves out of our bodies and replace them with better ones. We can, however, make them better, or stronger by strength training. And as long as you are training for improvements in overall strength, you will, little by little become faster.
Training fast to be fast is like eating fast to digest fast. Two completely different things. Doesn’t work like this. In fact, training fast forces you to use very light weights which do little do make you stronger.
If you want to be a fastER runner, if you want to have a fastER tennis serve, if you want to have a swiftER golf swing do this:
1.Practice the sport as perfectly as possible by hiring a coach who knows what they are talking about.
2. Strength train in a slow and controlled manner, steadily but gradually increasing the resistance over time.
That’s it!
