Pushing The Athlete In The Weight Room: How Much Is Too Much?
John Cissik is the author of Strength Training for Track & Field, among other books, articles and video presentations. Here he outlines ways of amplifying strength development programs while keeping in mind specificity and minimizing injury risk.

By John M. Cissik, MS, MBA, CSCS, NSCA-CPT

    Strength training is always a fun part of an athlete's training to be involved in. The challenge is that often athletes and coaches lose their perspective in regard to strength training. It ends up becoming the focus of training rather than just one more tool in a coach's toolbox.
    This especially becomes true as athletes become more advanced and adaptations are more difficult to come by. One of the most fun­damental principles of exercise, the overload principle, states that the body adapts to exercise-and once it adapts it becomes a little more difficult to make it continue adapting. Clearly we want our athletes to get better, to keep adapting, so this can lead us down distracting roads especially in terms of strength training.
    This article will describe the different ways to increase the over-load in a strength and conditioning program along with pros and cons of each. It will focus on the following methods that a track and field coach can use to increase the over­load of a strength and conditioning program:
      •  Modify the rest intervals
      •  Modify the exercise organization
      •  Increase the volume
      •  Increase the resistance
      •  Modify the exercises

MODIFY THE REST INTERVALS

    Changing the amount of rest in between sets has a powerful effect on how the workout is experienced. Shortening the rest periods makes each successive set more difficult, meaning that less weight can be handled. Lengthening the rest allows for more recovery, enabling the athlete to lift more weight.
    For example, if you perform three sets of squats with ten repetitions at 70% of 1-RM you will have a different experience if you only rest for 30 seconds between each set as opposed to resting for two minutes between each set.
    One has to be careful with this training variable because manipulating it can result in the wrong qualities being trained. In the weight room we want to be focusing on the energy systems and qualities that are needed for the event. Taking a thrower, for example, and focusing on sets with little rest will definitely develop his or her endurance - but this may be at the expense of the strength and power that the athlete needs.
    Table one gives an overview of common rest intervals in strength training programs and which qualities each are meant to develop.

MODIFY THE EXERCISE ORGANIZATION

    How the exercises are organized can impact how the training session is experienced and what benefits are drawn from it. Two broad approaches to this are to change the order of the exercises or to change how exercises are grouped.
    Normally in a strength training workout, the exercise are organ­ized so that the most complicated exercises involving the most muscle groups, technique, and speed are performed first. Those exercises that involve the least are performed last. Now, to increase the overload this can be modified. For example, performing leg extensions before squats has the effect of making the squats a lot more difficult. The drawback to this approach is that technique and explosiveness are going to suffer as a result of fatigue, which could increase the risks of injury in the weight room and could also reduce the effectiveness of the main exercises. This approach, while it can be effective, is probably better used in the early off-season.
    Modifying how the exercises are grouped together is a great exercise in time management especially as one gets into the season and training time begins to become scarce. One of the most applicable approaches to this for track and field athletes is to use complexes. These are combinations of strength exercises with plyometric exercises. For example, performing a set of back squats followed by a set of jumps.
    The idea here is that the strength exercise cues up the nervous system and then the plyometric exercise takes advantage of this cueing. Now, the research on this tends to look at workout sessions (as opposed to weeks of using this approach) and does not find any impact on perfor­mance during a workout. Even if this approach is not a magic bullet,
it's still a time effective way to train especially during the season.
    Table two shows examples of different exercise organization approaches, a sample of each, and information on what each develops.

INCREASE THE VOLUME

    Volume refers to the amount of work being done. For example, if I do three sets of ten repetitions my training volume is 30 repetitions. Increasing the volume increases the amount of the training stimulus that the body experiences, requiring it to continue adapting.
    There are, however, several challenges to this approach:
    There are only so many hours in the day. The more volume there is in a workout, the longer that workout is going to take. Ideally, strength training workouts should take a track and field athlete 30-60 minutes. However, workouts can easily take longer if the volume increases too much.
    If the strength training workouts take too long, then something else has to suffer. This ends up working the wrong qualities. A set of three repetitions and a set of thirty develop very different qualities in terms of energy systems, explosiveness, strength, ability to develop hypertrophy, etc. Increasing the volume too much can lead to the athlete emphasizing qualities that the coach doesn't want developed.
    Technique suffers with too much fatigue. Many of the funda­mental, multijoint strength training exercises require a lot of technique (squats, deadlifts, cleans, snatches, etc.). The technique serves two purposes: to prevent injuries and to maximize the effect of the exercise. When the volume on the exercise is too great, technique begins to deteriorate which increases the risks of injury and reduces the effectiveness of the exercise.
    Volume can be increased to a point, but it has to be kept within guidelines depending upon the exercise, time of year, and goals from the training. Table three provides some guidelines for the volume per set and what qualities that typically develops.

INCREASE THE RESISTANCE

    Increasing the resistance will increase the overload. This can be done in relative terms (i.e., a percentage of maximum), absolute terms (i.e., an increase in the amount of weight lifted), or can be an increase in how the resistance is experienced (i.e., by adding bands or chains). Clearly, increasing the resistance will impact how the body experiences training, but there are some cautions here:
    This cannot be continued forever. Strength is a function of a lot of things: body type, ability to recruit muscle fibers, attachments of muscles, physiological makeup, and training. Clearly, training is only going to increase strength to the point where the other limitations allow it to go. The more experience one has with training, the more difficult it becomes to increase strength. Research shows that elite strength athletes, even those using performance enhancing drugs, are lucky to increase their strength by 3-5% annually.
    Diminishing returns---it's always important to keep in mind that one is a track and field athlete first and that strength training is the means to improved performance,
not the end itself. It's very likely that past a certain level of strength additional performance improvements won't be proportional to the amount of weight room work and risk that will be necessary.
Injury risks---the further one pushes the envelope in terms of strength, the greater the risks of injury from the strength training. Remember that the body is also being pushed from all the other approaches to training that are being employed.
    The resistance can be increased in strength training workouts, but beyond a certain point a coach has to be careful. It's always easy to lose perspective with strength training. It should be one of the tools to help improve track and field performance but it should not be the focus of all the athlete's training.

MODIFY THE EXERCISES

    For advanced athletes, this is going to be one of the most potent training stimuli. Rest intervals can only be changed within a narrow range, the order of the exercises cannot be changed too freely without negatively impacting the reason for training, the volume can only be increased to a certain point and then the wrong qualities are being trained, and the resistance cannot be increased indefinitely. If an athlete has been on a good training program through high school and college it is going to be time to do things differently to keep him/her engaged and adapting.
    In strength training there are many exercises that essentially work the same muscle and motions. This means that after an athlete has developed his or her base in terms of strength and anatomic adaptation, these other exercises can be incorporated in order to provide variety and keep the athlete adapting.
    Table four provides examples using the back squat, power clean, and deadlift. As you can see, I came up with 32 variations of the three exercises without too much difficulty. By modifying the exercises for advanced athletes every three to six weeks, the athlete is able to keep adapting from the training.
    Strength training is a wonderful tool to help improve performance and prevent injuries, but it needs to be kept in perspective especially as athletes become more advanced and
the tendency is to add more and more to help boost performance. There are a number of avenues that can be explored to keep the athlete adapting, but these need to be done in a manner that is safe, effective, and prepares the athlete for his or her sport.
    John Cissik is the Director of Fitness and Recreation at Texas Woman's University. He holds certifications from USA Track and Field's coaching education program, has written extensively on strength training, and works with a number of track and field programs on their strength and conditioning.

FROM: TRACK COACH 192