"Balance" of physiological adaptations
Dear Coach or anyone else,
I get the whole thing about strength being the holy grail of physical fitness, I understand the reasons and I of course agree with them because they're true.
The thing I'm wondering is why, theoretically, strength specialization isn't optimal for everyone? I think the answer is quite simple and obvious but I have to double-check.
I saw You talking to the Onnit guys. Aubrey said something like "so in sport X, one would have to find the balance... getting stronger results in increased muscle mass and thus bodyweight. So one ought to get stronger to the point prior to diminishing returns and that point is the one at which the added bodyweight consumes too much oxygen for the added strength to be valuable. Strength means more submaximal contractions which means that one can go longer/harder. But there's a sweetspot which is when the mass requires so much oxygen that it overrides the benefits of the added strength".
You talked about climbing and said that if you made a 165lb climber 180lbs, he'd be a better climber. But that You wouldn't make him a 295lb elite powerlifter.
My question is Why?
I mean, my best guess is the "sweetspot" thing. At some point he's strong enough to make the climbing movements easy enough to be able to scale the rock without fatiguing, at which point added strength just means a heavier climber, which is a bad thing of course.
But, my question is a bit broader than that in that, well, first of all you also said that a heavier engine doesn't slow the car down. Unless one gets fat, one's strength increases with the added mass, and there doesn't seem to be a point at which one's weight increases more than one's strength, so to speak. Is it perhaps that climbing a high wall requires adaptations in muscle & liver glycogen and other stuff? Is this hampered by extremely big muscles? Theoretically, if a day had 100 hours in it, is there a reason why an endurance athlete couldn't also be a strength specialist? Is there some point of diminishing returns that isn't only about time and recovery? Obviously a cyclist needs to undergo "endurance" adaptations (and become stronger!), but again, assuming that he could maximize his endurance adaptations while also maximizing his strength adaptations, is there a reason why maximizing strength would be bad rather than good or neutral? If it is, is it the added weight? If there's a sweetspot where one's strong enough and has the other physiological adaptations to complete the race at a certain pace, added strength -> added weight would seem to be stupid. Is it that simple or am I missing something?
You also told them that one either has punching power or not. Explosiveness is as we all know innate. So that makes perfect sense. Assuming equal tecnique ("making oneself heavy" by sitting on the punch), the velocity of the punch is all that matters (which means acceleration which means motor unit recruitment because a punch takes very little time to perform and a fist offers very little resistance). BUT, I also remember reading a thread in which you said that it's important for a boxer to be strong assuming that it's important to be able to hit hard. I wonder why? Is it the added bodyweight i.e. added weight of the thrown projectile? Because I think you'd agree that one's punches don't become faster from added strength. Maybe it's the follow-through?
That's it.