Originally Posted by
darn48
This site was recommended by one of my power lifting friends. I enjoy reading your material as i dont know a lot about power lifting. I have been a sports guy growing up, Hockey, Football, Boxing, Sprinting and Long distance running, and Soccer were my sports of choice. I now train athletes using the fundamentals i was taught and now have learned. I wanted to talk to you about stability training. I know you dislike this topic however, i think you can give me great insight.
First off, I 100% agree with you that in order to gain the strength needed you MUST do load bearing exercises. A squat or a deadlift, multi joint exercises in general are the #1. I also agree with you that in regard to Core, i have never felt that looking at the abdominals as the core to be true. But some of the things i would like to as about i felt were a bit short sighted in your disection of stabilization training.
You mentioned tennis players for example, how the surface they play on is a stable flat surface, so why train on an unstable one? True the surface may be stable but the players body is in full movement. Unlike a squat where everything is stationary, they are running and bounding side to side. Athletes who play on a field, and even though the surfaces looks flat we know turf is soft and as soon as you dig into it, it all of the sudden becomes unstable.
I have come to learn that every muscle ( each individual muscle ) has its own core. Through stabilization training yes there is no point in adding heavy weight; but heavy weight is not the point. When you are doing a squat on say a bosu ball for example, you are working your quads, but because of trying to focus on staying stable you are engaging the muscles in the calf that would not be engaged on a stable surface. Its like having a guy who can squat 700 lbs in the gym and then asking him to do the same thing out in the bush; we know it is not going to happen. But you train him to take the conditions in the bush but apply it to the gym and think about where you will go from there.
In my opinion stabilization training is crucial to train athletes to activate other muscles that would not other wise be worked. This will give more overall strength to the player, and help to prevent injury since more muscles know how, and have the strength to combat an ill moved opposing force.
Again these are my thoughts, and i would love to hear your thought on it. I will continue reading your insights, as i hope that one day a power lifting athlete seeks my training. Thank you again for considering this, and thank you for your time.