Watt a Lie 

By Carl Valle USATF II, C.S.C.S 
For Elitefts.com

When designing specific weight training for an elite athlete, many coaches look at the demands of the event or sport. This cannot be further from the truth. Sports science has evolved but as coaches we have failed to use the new information correctly. For example the current women’s 400m world record is 47.60 by Marita Koch, set all the way back in 1985. In the 2000 Olympics Cathy Freeman won with a 49.11, showing that perhaps 20 years ago people were doing things that worked rather well. Perhaps we should learn from history and empirical evidence, not from theories of people that only do seminars for a living.

In an ideal world, science should aid in the evolution of weight training by refining what has proven to work in the past. Many coaches are lost because they chase the new trends in sports performance. Some of these include hyper-specific exercises and functional training. A prime example of this is the dangerous combination of strength exercises with balance to improve power. Doing cleans on a balance board may get you a job with the circus but it will never prepare you for the sport. Not only does this look foolish and turns off elite athletes (so coveted by sports trainers), it is also dangerous and ineffective. The rational of this thinking is that we must replicate the speed, angle, load, and pattern of the sport to improve performance. When distributing the stress in an attempt to please all of the elements of the sport, you are no longer overloading the body, just spreading out the work into all of the demands.

I am not a proponent of most velocity lifts or exercises. The reason for this is that most athletes overtrain and receive most of their velocity/speed work from the field or track. Adding more medicine ball rotational throws to improve bat speed is a risky idea if you look at the big picture. With all of the batting practice a baseball player does, adding more speed work can overtrain his central nervous systems and decrease performance. Instead of dropping the exercise to give their sluggers a break, some trainers choose to tweak the exercise by doing it on one leg or with a balance device. Bad idea.

Then we have the Olympic lifts. While I do use them with some athletes I can only say that only 5% of my athletes do them regularly to improve their performance. The fastest athlete I have worked with (2000 Olympic Gold Medallists Kenny Brokenburr) never cleaned or snatched with me. I felt that his squat technique wasn’t up to par and there was no reason to teach a movement that required a far more technical skill level. If he was 10 years younger and had a natural feel for the lifts I might have integrated the movements in his program. Fortunately with so many stimuli such as the sprinting work, plyometrics, medicine ball throws, and structural lifts, I didn’t worry about one movement in one component of his training. The expert strength coaches that followed my athletes’ training considered my elimination of the Olympic lifts moronic. From their ivory tower perspective I was incompetent to teach them the skills, or I didn’t have the research that shows that the highest wattage comes from the snatch! They failed to realize that the hip of an elite sprinter generates more watts while at top speed then by any Olympic lift or variation. Heavy squats were just too simple for them and didn’t satisfy their need for journal research to confirm the obvious. They failed to realize that the sport prepares the specific qualities and lifting should expand and improve the general strength of the organism. The goal of strength training is to improving strength, and should not try to replicate the sport. At the 2001 S.W.I.S conference in Toronto, Charlie Francis explained the concept of how general training improves performance. Unfortunately, it was rejected by many of the members of the audience because it didn’t have the glamour or sex appeal. So instead of looking at the demands of the sport, let the lifts assist the general needs and leave the replication to the circus clowns.