Andrew Read

Elasticity

Take your left hand and place it on a flat table. Raise your middle finger and push it down into the table as hard as you can. Really try to slam that finger down.

Now relax the hand. Reach over with your right hand and pull that same finger back and let it snap down. How much effort did it take to do that? Not much, right? But it generated so much more force than through the first method.

If you were to persist with the first method -- continually raising the finger under your own muscular power you'd get tired pretty soon. But if you can store and release the energy, lifting with your other hand, you could do it all day long producing many times more power with a fraction of the effort.

This is a good demonstration of the elastic power of muscle. Everything we do has some sort of elastic component to it, whether it's walking, running or playing sports. The more efficiently we can store and release energy, the less effort we have to give.

Elasticity works in phases, starting with elongation or eccentric loading, in which the muscles put on the brakes by lengthening or storing energy -- as in a backswing in golf. That is followed by a switch from the storing to the releasing of energy. It's important to have excellent stability and proprioception during this phase or all the power we've generated will "leak" out of the core.

If our bodies work properly we'll be like a Superball which bounces very high. Unfortunately, most people are more like flat basketballs -- all that potential energy is lost and the ball bounces back from the floor with minimal force.

Sadly, life today deals us a double whammy with our muscle elasticity. What we develop as kids we often lose as adults due to a higher level of inactivity with most people's work being done in a seated position in front of a computer all day. The kids too are short changed as they stop playing at an earlier age and are more prone to having hobbies that involve sedentary activity.

Most people think that by going to the gym or jogging occasionally they are compensating with their program. But if you train like most people, not only are you not helping the problem, you may actually be making it worse.

Just because you may have gotten a client to put on a few pounds of muscle does not mean that their power output has increased. There is not an exact, or even direct, correlation between muscle size and power.

Exercises that are designed to increase muscle elasticity and power production fall into three main categories -- short, long and rapid response. They all work to activate your body's nervous system, stimulating the fast twitch fibres so that force can be generated as quickly and efficiently as possible. They also teach your body to reduce force quickly, which is often just as important as generating the force. Many injuries occur because people just aren't able to decelerate quickly enough. Nearly all of the work I do with elite volleyball players in the off season centres around work on deceleration of movement and jumps.

Rapid response drills are low force, high speed activities to improve ground reaction forces and quickness.

Short response activities help you hit the ground and spring back off immediately, improving your body's ability to be springy or elastic.

Long response exercises use longer ranges of motion and your feet will stay on the ground longer but you'll produce much higher levels of power with each repetition.

With literally thousands of drills available to increase muscle elasticity there is a wide array of starting places. Obviously your client's history and abilities need to be taken into account when introducing new high speed, high force exercises.

Andrew Read has worked in the fitness industry for 15 years. In that time he has worked with everyone from elite athletes to the average Joe. His training company, Relentless Performance Training is located in Melbourne, Australia. His years of experience, knowledge and desire to always find better ways has led him to be one of the most in demand trainers in Australia.