[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
I’ve always felt that strength gains via neural adaptations don’t help sports, your hops or speed, but muscle gains in the right place do. Neural adaptations and rate coding gains are movement and skill specific, while muscle gains are general
Nice Thomas White quote
T White is now on the Ravens in the NFL FYI - they’re a HIT team according to him 
Listen I’ve done it all: Westside, Gayle Hatch program, true ME work on bench and squat 2x a week, Poliquin, APRE, exotic Christian T type stuff in the weight room, etc. At the end of the day it doesn’t need to be rocket science. Practice your sport/activity as the primary stimulus, then go to the weight room and push your self with work in the 70-80% range. Don’t chase numbers in the weight room, this is coming from a guy who has squatted 540 and done nearly as much on the deadlift, it is a fruitless endeavor (ego aside). True ME work doesn’t have a place in the training of a team sport athlete or sprinter. From my experience all you are doing is getting better at lifting heavy weights, at the possible expense of your joints and tendons! Remember that the weight room is a means to an end!
Another thing I have found to hold true is Charlie’s (Charlie Francis) old standby: If it looks right, it flies right.
I can tell you that the guys with big glutes and hamstrings were always the fastest but not always the strongest, even pound for pound. My former teammates David Gettis comes to mind, built like TO at 6’3 220 with massive hamstrings and glutes but would often get out squatted by guys with much smaller muscles. But on the field he would blow all of them away, ran a 45.x 400m in high school and could jump out of the gym as well, he and I used to do dunk contests and it would draw a little crowd.
Basically he was a very strong guy who didn’t express it very well in a squat rack but did where it actually counted!
I think most people would be better off chasing larger muscles in the weight room rather than numbers, strap a few lbs. muscle on your glutes and hamstrings and I guarantee you’ll be a better athlete.
Here’s another anecdote that will make Colin smile:
A good friend of mine used to work exclusively with reps above 6 (mostly 8-10), aside from an occasional heavy triple on the bench. He played D1 ball with me and was a terror on special teams. His primary philosophy was “max effort” which to him meant going to near failure on his sets of 8-10 and his bread and butter was 3x10 on the bench with a very heavy weight and 4x8 on the squat, only adding weight when he was able to complete all the reps in every set. At the time (2005 or so) I thought his program was poor in comparison to something as “cutting edge” as Westside but now looking back he was maximally activating his fibers and working them in that state (the core tenet of DC, rest-pause, Myo-reps). The result was benching over 400, squatting over 500, cleaning 353, having a 36’’ CMJ and running a 4.45 despite rarely running outside of off-season. This was all at 6’3 215 and 6% BF.
Spring of 2008, he quit football after breaking his wrist pretty badly, he really devoted himself to working hard in the weight room and becoming absolutely freaky. He used split training but made sure he hit the bench and squat 2x a week. He did no plyometrics or running during this period but admittedly did use a popular OTC “supplement” by CEL. At the end of the training phase, 6-8 weeks, he was absolutely huge, 226-228 and leaner and more vascular with glutes and hamstrings that were gigantic. But the real surprise came when he returned from a workout and asked me to measure his vertical because he felt like he could fly. At this point I still believed in the “all show, no go” philosophy and figured that all the weight gain and lack of specific work would leave him well below his best CMJ. I was wrong…
He jumped 39’', 3 inches better than he ever did while training full time as a D1 college football player with OL’s, plyos, etc. He also did so while being heavier than ever.
That really opened my eyes and brought things full circle to the value of muscle in the right places. Many of you have come to a similar conclusion.
Practice your sport → Build more muscle in the primary muscles[/quote]
Thanks man that was really informative.
