Dr Mel Siff Blog

It is interesting to note two very divergent trends in strength and fitness training for top level sport, one
which focuses on the advances made by technology and the other which
emphasizes a return to the use of no- or low-technological methods, an
approach which some refer to as “dinosaur training”.

Some of the world’s finest athletes are extolling the virtues of each and it
is apparent that each of these two approaches is bearing some useful fruit.
This afternoon, the great sprinter, Michael Johnson, was asked on TV for his
opinion of training methods, such as periodisation and cycling. His
response? He smilingly dismissed both of these concepts as they commonly are
offered by coaches today. In return he asked why should it be all that
impossible to rise progressively to a peak and stay at that high plateau level
for prolonged periods, as he stated he always does. He implied that the use of
cycling up and down over a prolonged period to peak for only a few special
events physically and mentally act against athletic success.

Yes, I am sure that there will be those will comment on the way in which he
‘pulled’ a hamstring during the recent trials to ‘prove’ that his approach is
not all that flawless, but the fact remains is that he has produced excellent
success with his methods, which are reminiscent of those used by Bulgarian
athletes.

Add to his experience the great success being enjoyed by Louie Simmons and
his Westside Club, who use no high technology at all. Instead there is an
abundance of almost dinosaurian training with chains, bands, sleds and cars
that challenge the body and mind in myriad ways of developing great sport
specific strength and power. In this case, their methods are often guided by
what we have discovered in science, but they do not rely largely on
technology for their success.

For instance, a biomechanist who was interviewed for today’s TV program on
Olympic training pointed out that the greatest advantage that distance
athletes could have is to throw their shoes away (as did Abebe Bikila of
Ethiopia and Zola Budd of South Africa), because the added weight (1lb on the
feet is equivalent to 8lbs on the back) and dissipation of energy by shock
absorbing soles forces the athlete to use more energy to cover the same
distance at the same speed.

Ironically, after Bikila turned to running exclusively with shoes, he
suffered a bone fracture of his left leg and he had to drop out of the 1968
Mexico Olympics after his previous victories in Rome and Tokyo. Zola Budd
also turned to using shoes and orthotic devices, and she ended up being
plagued by leg injuries and a running career that never reached the same top
international standard again. Circumstantial evidence, maybe, nevertheless
this is interesting and suggestive that shoes and orthotics at best offer no
significant performance advantage to endurance performance athletes. Tracks,
on the other hand, such as the renowned Harvard synthetic track most
definitely produced faster times and set the trend for the design of new
synthetic tracks.

In other words, the main benefit of shoes is to prevent damage to the sole of
the foot, but otherwise, their main effect is to make running less efficient.
Makes one wonder about the whole sports shoe business!

While we have some Western athletes who are regularly tested for metabolic
and bioenergetic efficiency excelling in endurance events, we often have
their performances overshadowed by African athletes who rely on the most
basic intuitive methods. The same scenario repeats itself in several other
types of individual and team sports.

Would anyone care to comment on the relative roles played by ‘high tech’ and
‘low tech’ training methods in the preparation of the modern elite athlete?
Is anyone convinced that athletes who are heavily supported by the hugely
expensive sports science institutes around the world will produce
performances that statistically are significantly superior to those of
athletes who rely largely on low-tech training?

Dr Mel C Siff

in his book facts and fallacies of fitness, renowned exercise physiologist and biomechanist mel siff notes that force plate analysis shows that even fairly heavy squats (exceeding bodymass) do not impose as a great a load on the body as ...

in his book facts and fallacies of fitness, renowned exercise physiologist and biomechanist mel siff notes that force plate analysis shows that even fairly heavy squats (exceeding bodymass) do not impose as great a load on the body as ...