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Faster, Higher, Stronger

Since the Olympic winter games are taking place as we speak in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, I thought it would be a great time to discuss a topic that does crop up every so often in my physiotherapy practice in Toronto.

While watching the Olympic games, we can see incredible feats of athletic prowess and extraordinary examples of the constantly evolving boundaries of human performance.

With the constant chant for “Citius, Altius, Fortius” reverberating in their minds, athletic limits are being tested and achievement records are being broken.

So this begs the question: Is performance really healthy?

Just perusing the biographies of almost any of the elite athletes that have qualified to represent their countries at the highest level of competition, one can see an almost infinite variety of minor to serious injuries that these extremely conditioned individuals have overcome to reach their personal achievements.

Multiple knee surgeries, broken bones, concussions, separated shoulders, sprains and strains.

The list is essentially endless.

Now going back to the question regarding performance and health, here’s my take in one word.

NO…

And here are a few more of my words…

Performance is very seldom healthy.

Olympic Weightlifting Injury

Before I get pilloried on the internet, let me qualify that preceding statement.

In the pursuit of extremes, in the pursuit of redefining the boundaries of human athletic performance, in the pursuit of winning medals at the highest levels of competition, athletes must be in peak physical and mental condition and must undertake rigorous training programs.

But in order to do what has not been done before, risks have to be taken.

This is where limits are pushed, where boundaries are stretched.

This is where that razor thin line between risk and reward is often crossed.

Nodar Kumaritashvili

This is where, as was witnessed just a few short days ago, a young Georgian luger by the name of Nodar Kumaritashvili, lost his life in a horrific crash while he was pursuing his dream of winning an Olympic medal for his country.

I’ve always believed that the human body is capable of incredible feats.

And that as time passes, as science and technology advance, we’ll be able to perform at even higher levels.

But for most people, are these levels of performance required?

Do most people need to test the limits of their bodies?

When these athletes train to extremes, they constantly put their bodies at risk.

Risk of injury, risk of over-training.

At what point does the average human being decide that the risk is not worth the reward?

Or, when does one decide that they are okay with being just average?

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

“entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”

William of Ockham

In its elegance, it has become a guiding philosophy in much that I do. That is the power of the law of parsimony.

In human movement science, injury rehab or athletic performance, the solutions to our problems are usually right in front of us, just waiting to be noticed, just waiting to be acted upon.

“All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.”

The first time I heard of Ockham’s Razor, I was in high school. And since that time, in my clinical practice as a physical therapist in Toronto, I’ve applied it many times. And I’ve seen it work many times. From relieving low back pain to improving power, it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Even the great Leonardo Da Vinci thought so with his variation of Occam’s Razor:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” 

I’m not saying that this is always the case, but rather,  I’m saying don’t ignore the obvious for the sake of the more complicated. So try applying this concept into every aspect of your life. 

If you’re looking to lose excess weight, become a better athlete or just fix your bad back, look at the obvious first.

Eat clean. 

Exercise hard. 

Fix your movement.

Dev Chengkalath

No two athletes are alike.

You all carry varied and intrinsic physical and mental characteristics. You all have your own unique strengths and weaknesses.

Because of these individual differences, you will respond to a training stimulus differently than your friend, training partner or teammate.

The bottom line is that certain training methods may elicit increased performance outcomes in some athletes but decrease the same in others. Basically, you may find doing high intensity intervals (HIIT) jacks up your endurance capacity, whereas your buddy may actually lose some endurance capacity unless he does longer duration cardio work at a lower intensity.

Different training programs, different results.

(Aside: HIIT is not the holy grail of energy systems training for everyone. Nor is long slow cardio. I still strongly believe that theses different forms of energy systems training each have their place in a well designed training program.)

Instead of blindly copying the latest training program of XYZ famous pro athlete, found on the glossy pages of the most popular fitness magazines, don’t you think it’s wiser to understand the guiding principles that form that program and apply those in a unique and creative manner instead?

By doing so, your specific needs as an individual and as an athlete will be met; strengths will be bolstered and weaknesses will be buffered.

By individualizing your training regimen, you or your athletes can invoke optimal training responses in order to achieve maximal performance outcomes.

And isn’t that what the training program is all about?

Performing Better.

Dev Chengkalath

Going back to general exercise physiology, one will encounter many “laws”, or basic tenets upon which all training programming should be based.

In the realm of strength and conditioning, one of these is defined as the principle of accommodation.

In the athletic sense this principle states that you can expect a decrease in performance gains over time if your training stimulus is kept constant over a long period.

In athletic preparation, the stimulus is the physical exercise and the response to this stimulus is the performance enhancement specifically caused by the adaptation. By increasing the training volume or the duration of the training, the degree of adaptation will decrease.

This follows the law of diminishing returns.

For example, a relative beginner to weightlifting may see significant performance gains by using a relatively small training stimulus, whereas, with seasoned lifters, even very intense training regimens may not cause any noteworthy performance improvements.

This is why a gym newbie can increase their bench press by 50 pounds while a gym veteran will do well to increase their max by 10!

So, in order for you to avoid the loss of performance gains via accommodation over time, your training must be varied to avoid stagnation with respect to the training stimulus. This, however, creates additional concerns. By creating variety in training, your must still maintain event-specific motor patterns with sport-mimicking physiological demands. This is where the familiar term “sport-specific” training comes in.

So what does that leave you with?

Chaos will make accommodation harder!

Effective training programs must both be variable, to decrease accommodation, and specific, to maintain training transferability to the athletic event.

How can this be achieved?

To minimize or negate the deleterious effects of accommodation, your training program must be changed on a regular basis. Essentially, they must be altered in some form at a given point in time either through quantitative methods (changing the loading parameters) or qualitative means (such as changing the type of exercises or movements).

If you want to keep your performance up, make sure you don’t accomodate!

Stay tuned for the next segment in this series where we’ll take a closer look at specificity and individualization as they relate to the Law of Adaptation.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

As I said before, I’ll be spending some time going over the more salient points of exercise science as it relates to human performance.

And if you’re at all into human movement (which is why you’re reading this!), then you are most likely into improving performance.

This includes taking your abilities to the next level.  

In order to create a stimulus for performance enhancement, a certain amount of overload on the athlete’s system is required. Essentially, adaptation to training will only take place if the magnitude of the training load is greater than the level typically experienced by the athlete.

Milo's Bull Grew Too Fast

There are a couple methods how you, as coach or as an athlete, can induce this type of adaptation response.

The first method would involve an increase in your training load, either by increasing intensity or volume parameters, while using the same exercise or movement pattern.

The second would involve the introduction of a novel stimulus to your training. A similar yet different movement or a completely new exercise for example. 

In highly trained, elite level athletes, positive training adaptations may be lost in a matter of weeks or even days if the training stimulus is diminished. For this reason, elite competitive athletes should avoid complete passive rest greater than 3 days. For the rest of us trying to better ourselves, we have little more leeway in terms of rest and recovery periods.

The idea of training load, as broken down by Zatsiorsky and Kraemer, can be organized into three classes based on their magnitude:

• Stimulating: Magnitude above baseline, positive adaptation occurs.
• Retraining: Magnitude at baseline, fitness maintenance.
• Detraining: Magnitude below baseline, performance decrements

So where does that leave you?

Based on the above information, in order to create positive adaptation in your athletic ability, constant increases in training loads (stimulating) are required through progressive overloading.

Basically, as you or your athletes adapt to a certain stimulus level, a new baseline is achieved. In order to improve from that position, increased training loads that surpass this new baseline must be introduced.

It’s because this principle isn’t taken into account that you’ll see the same people doing the same things, with the same weight, day in, day out at your gym, week after week. And that is why they still look the same as the day they started.

So the take home point here is that the principle of progressive overload is fundamentally important in a carefully designed training program in order to reap the full benefits of adaptation, athletic or otherwise!

In the next installment of this series, I’ll delve deeper into the idea of accommodation under the Law of Adaptation. 

Until next time.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

P.S. For those wondering about Milo’s Bull, a pretty good breakdown of the fable can be read here.