-: All right let's talk about the short and stretching
or stretch and shortening cycles,
depending on which way you want to go,
and how we would design a neurological program
that is really gonna focus on improving
that efficiency or that turnover.
All right, usually we're focusing on the stretch to short.
So from the eccentric to the concentric.
All right so our goal is the ability to reverse going
from the stretch or that eccentric
into the concentric under load, right?
So this is gonna be super important for people
that play any skill that requires change of direction
or any sort of reaction and response.
So if we're looking at anybody that's playing
soccer or football or anything that requires
cutting changes in direction
this is an extremely important skill to have.
We're basically learning to use passive tension
to our advantage to use it as a performance tool.
And also use it as a protective mechanism, right?
So developing a little a bit of that elastic
tension to kind of decrease the momentum and the resistance
in the force that's coming into those terminal end ranges.
Or even in most cases stop us from getting
to that terminal end range.
So a lot of times in sport performance you don't
have people going to maximal end ranges of the joint
if they can avoid it, because that's usually
the point of power loss.
So usually what we're doing is we're using
that passive tension to kind of serve as a rubber band
that's gonna either keep us from there
or bring us closely out of that position.
And from a performance perspective, not only is that
more forced output, but it is a little bit
of energy conservation.
'Cause if this is elastic energy, it's taking away from
the amount of contractile work that I have to do
or it's compounding one of the two
if they're in their maximal effort.
But either way I'm getting more performance
and likely they're expending the same or less energy
to get that performance.
So obviously not something that we're focusing on.
We're focusing on hypertrophy and metabolic training
for physique or hypertrophy.
But it is something that we want to focus on,
either from a sports perspective, or what's underrated
oftentimes it's the injury prevention in athletes
or even in your just general gym population
or your weightlifters.
This can actually be extremely important
for people that do a lot of control-resistance training
because they have all this muscular strength.
But if they've been training their body
to not use any of this and then they go do something like
snowboarding or water-skiing or pickup basketball
or something and this quality is very inefficient,
it can increase their risk of having
like one of those fluke injuries.
I was just reaching over here
and I jumped and cut or whatever.
I was water-skiing and the thing pulled out.
And it wasn't a lack of strength,
it was a lack of an ability to coordinate
how to use that passive tension that lead to the injury.
So exercise selection, here we're gonna use
like rebounding exercises, land and explode up.
Flywheel or versapulley training
where it pulls you eccentric and you have to react to it.
Like those elastic training methods
if you guys have ever seen some of those.
Basically, the way these work is you generate momentum
on a pulley and whatever you generate on the concentric
it yanks you back and you gotta do it again and again.
It's like starting a lawnmower over and over
and over and over again, except the lawnmower
really pulls you back down.
If you haven't had to start a lawnmower,
that's you know, millennials, anyways.
You want to make sure we can exercise
where you can safely perform fast eccentrics, right?
So this needs, usually it's not gonna be something
that is terminal lengthening, because that's the most
dangerous place to be going in eccentric fast
is getting all the way to that very bottom position.
So a lot of times what we'll do is we'll either create
an artificial stopping point or we'll use a decelerated load
well de-load the length and position.
Or, yes, we can use a decelerating
like a combinator resistance like reverse band
on hack squat or something like that.
You really want to start with as little load
in that lengthened position as possible.
So you can just focus on the speed, right?
Cause this is all about conversion
of eccentric to concentric
not necessarily the amount of load
that you can do there
when you get any of that terminal end range.
Once you get fast conversion once you have that speed
then you can start to add
more resistance into those positions.
But you definitely want to make sure
if you're starting to incorporate
this into somebody's program that you do it safe.
Focus on that speed, the ability to build a passive tension
then explode out of it with some momentum.
Like, none of these things should happen slow.
So you wanna think about it as like
my goal is to make it so I can take somebody
through an eccentric to concentric
as fast and as safe as possible, right?
So what exercise are you gonna do that
likely they are not gonna be the most lengthened exercises
or the most lengthened overloaded exercises
and the most lengthened positions
are going to be the most advance and aggressive techniques.
Cause if its harder than the lengthened position
where I'm going into it fast, I have momentum
and the load, then that's pretty tough.
If I'm getting that terminal end range
that's also where I'm gonna get the most mechanical damage.
And also where I'm going to be at the highest risk
of injuring going through a fast eccentric.
So I wanna take that into account.
The more lengthened bias, and the load,
and the range of motion the more
mechanical damage that's gonna occur.
So also you then ran into that
like okay I'm gonna to mess up my training frequency.
Not just risk of injury but like
is it gonna become something
I am not able to do this type of activity.
When I'm doing something like speed work
if your not doing excessive amount of volume
frequency can be relatively high, right?
For neurological work anyway, right?
But if you over do it with inflammation and stuff
like that its gonna take the nervous system a lot longer
to recover and also wait for that mechanical stuff
before we can get to maximal contractions again.
So tempo and intent, do not, do not, no,
perform to exhaustion or failure.
Our goal is speed of turnover
between eccentric and concentric.
As we start to fatigue our contractions
become more inefficient so those fast eccentrics
which are the highest risk type of contractions
that is not a place to train those.
We wanna train those in a point where our body
has enough energy and the nervous system is recovered enough
that we can convert over to those
very very fast and efficient.
We don't want to lose contractile efficiency
in high risk positions or circumstances.
So start with a gradual deceleration
and reversal of the stretch shortening cycle.
So it can be as simple as taking somebody from an exercise
where they weren't doing any pauses
or they were doing pauses
and then eliminating the pause, right?
So it could go from doing squats
where we are going slow eccentric to controlled stop
then coming up to having like a tempo based squats, right?
So when your talking about incorporating
this into a Regular Joe's program that's like step 1, right?
Not jumping into pylometrics or you know, whatever.
Then we can work towards more aggressive, like faster stops
faster eccentrics, faster conversions
and adding load to that reversal, right?
But do not start there, you start as far away from that
as possible and progress over to it.
The X intent needs to occur after the reversal.
So you have the eccentric
where you're decelerating that
and then you explode, right?
But the thing to keep in mind
is that while I do want people to explode there.
The main effect we get from here is understanding
for our body how to use that passive tension
and then come out of it.
So it's more about the transition, right?
So a good way to think about this
is to think about ground contact time.
So if your looking at people doing foot work drills
and sprinting and what not, the goal is not
like okay I landed and I'm spending a lot of time
like trying to get a maximal next you'll see is people
will land and go excessively deep or something into a squat
and then come out of it, no what you wanna do
is when your feet hits the ground
you're instantly trying to go back
in the other direction, right?
So that's the maximal goal is to get to that point
where it's like you land then you go.
You rebound instantaneously.
So what you can do you could start
with like softer like okay, I land,
I gather some tension, then go.
And then what you can try and do is start creating
a faster deceleration and then conversion over
to concentric and start decreasing that ground contact time.