4 Qualities of Optimizing Strength: Part 1-Eccentric Ability
I recently spoke to one of our athlete’s parents who commented, “I don’t know what you are doing back there, but it sure is showing up on the ice.” So I’ve decided that the next 4 blog post will be a series to briefly explain some of the main concepts I highlight when designing a performance program specifically for each of my athletes.
4 Qualities of Optimizing Strength; Part 1 Eccentric Ability
At F2P we believe a well-designed performance training program should center around sport specific movements, increasing an athlete’s efficiency and ability. When looking at the majority of sport movements there are 4 qualities that work together to optimize strength for those movements. The first quality is Eccentric Ability, how well does your muscle work like a rubber band when stretching. The second is Yielding Strength, how well does your body resist/absorb force to be stable. The third is Reactive Strength, what is your muscle’s ability to go from a stretching action to a shortening action. And the fourth quality is Rate of Force Development (RFD), how fast and with how much force can your muscles create movement. One thing to note is all of this is joint and body specific, and will always happen. We are trying to make each quality more efficient thus making the athlete more explosive, powerful, and safer.
This blog post will focus on “Eccentric Ability”.
Eccentric Ability is how well an athlete’s muscles work like a rubber band when stretching and how that affects muscle strength/power. At first thought, the rubber band effect might seem like an easy “one step idea” to understand, but there are actually two concepts that you need to understand.
The first concept is muscles work like rubber bands meaning they are elastic. A stretch reflex is created because your muscles work like a rubber band. When you stretch them they want to snap back to their resting/normal position. Think about taking a rubber band and stretching it, what effects how it is going to snap back? The distance you stretch it, the rate you stretch it, or even after you stretch it do you release it right away, hold it, or move it? All those things affect how the rubber band snaps back; the same thing with stretching your muscles. Knowing how your muscles react to stretching, will give you an idea of how you can enhance your performance.
To help give you a better picture of what is meant by this think about doing a simple front to back leg swing. Placing your inside hand on the wall swing your inside leg. Start off just at normal speed and take note of the stretch in your hamstring. Now speed it up, what you should notice is you feel a bigger stretch and maybe not even going as high with your leg. This tension or stretch is the energy that your muscle wants to snap back with. Thus, training muscles to create a greater stretch or tension feeling, not only from a distance, but also a speed standpoint will help you to increase the power of your snap back.
The second concept to understand is the ways your muscles can react to this stretching action. If the body can handle this stretch in order to not get hurt, it will snap back faster, thus the so-called stretch reflex. However, if the body can’t handle this stretch it will create excess movement (different joints moving) to take tension off of the muscle which can lead to non-contact injuries or decreased performance. Remember it is the magnitude and the rate of the stretch that determine this tension. With sport happening as fast as it does, it is the rate of the stretch that is often overlooked when it comes to performance and injury prevention in training programs.
Understanding and knowing how an athlete’s muscle is responding to the rubber band effect can tell you a lot about how performance can be enhanced. The rate and magnitude of the stretch a muscle goes through can either help or hinder performance. Thus an effective training protocol will take this into account and train the muscle to go through a more effective and safer stretching action.
