The Weightlifting Addiction

Editors Note: My new site is now at www.just-fly-sports.com Check it out for a wealth of information on jumping higher and running faster, all backed by research and practical experience!

You know what I am talking about......or maybe not, but I would say that most people reading this know what I am talking about.

Weightlifting Addiction, How to tell if you are a "lifting addict":

1. Your standing vertical has increased over the past few years, but your running jump hasn't, and your running one leg jump DEFINITELY hasn't!

2. You get anxious to get to the gym the day of your lifting workout.....as soon as you wake up, it is the first thing on your mind.

3. You have gained 10+ pounds in the first year you started lifting.

4. You have this inevitable urge to go heavy in the weightroom.......especially when there are a large amount of people watching.....

5. You have dreams about power-cleaning 2x your bodyweight

6. You find yourself watching olympic lifting competitions when you are bored

7. You haven't improved your 30m dash or slam-dunking ability in 2 years, but who cares! You can squat 150lb more!

8. You feel that if you can't squat 2x bodyweight, you are a failure as an athlete


OK, well those are a few signs I guess......and I will say that this post is primarily geared towards you unilaterals out there, aka track and field jumpers and anyone else who wants to get up off 1 leg. I will say that being a "lifting addict" isn't all that bad, but if you are a jumper or sprinter it can eventually hurt you! For the most part, a killer standing vertical requires a HUGE squat, and a good 2 leg running vertical requires a pretty good squat, but more complex movements such as running and jumping off 1 leg take a little more plyometric persuasion.

I am certainly not bashing lifting at all, but in order to be a good unilateral jumper, there comes a point in a yearly training cycle when you have to take a break from lifting. This usually comes in the form of plyometric shock work. Beleive it or not, taking a break from lifting to do a few depth jump cycles might actually increase your squat. After all, you will be dramatically increasing the output of your nervous system through the myotatic reflex, as well as doing some intensive work specific to bi-lateral power production.

Russian science has shown that the training effect of weightlifting regarding the improvement of speed-strength diminishes within 14 weeks. This scenario has happened to many of us......we start lifting again after taking some time off and gain a lot, but then suddenly we stop gaining, and instead of switching over to another stimulus, aka, plyometrics, we just try to keep tweaking out our lifting programs, adding cluster sets, drop sets, isometrics, partial reps and the like. As some famous authors say regarding periodization, "why do most coaches feed their athletes crap for workouts up until the big meets and then finally back off the weights and do what the athlete needed in the first place?". Of course the athlete will feel refreshed, but he/she could be at a much higher state of sport mastry if they had gotten what they needed earlier in the season.

I will say that the training effect of lifting can be extended by adding variation, but all lifting is in essence the same in the fact that it offers a training effect of neurological duration, and is not necessarily specific to jumping or running. I think the fear that many people have is that they will lose their hard-earned weightroom strength when they switch to plyos, or that they haven't hit that "magic number" in the weightroom yet. Alternating cycles will not kill you though, as long as they are planned out with the long term goal in mind! The key is to be patient. Yes, those elite jumpers can clean over 1.5 times their bodyweight, and squat 2.5x, but they didn't get there by spending the majority of their traning time in the weightroom. I will bet you that for the most part, they are naturally explosive, as well as have gained explosiveness through jumping, which contributes to their weight room numbers.

A quick, second to last note.....most Western track coaches develop the different strength qualities in parallel throughout the season....which works, but according to Eastern sport science, not as well as well-planned blocks with specific goals.

I will end on a note from Tudor Bompa's famous text of periodization for sports which says that athletes who have seemed to reach a plateu after a high training age can benefit by altering cycles of plyometrics and maximal strength. Seems to make sense to me. The two methods build on each other, and are powerful stimuli. FINALLY, to those two would say, "well I have great reactive strength, I just need to get stronger now right?". For a standing vertical jump, yes you need to get stonger, for high jumping, yes, but not to the point that you would for standing vertical. The ground contact time must remain low! I will get to this more another day, but for now, the moral of the story is, stick with what works, which is not using a specific training stiumuls for longer than you need to.

The Internet Age of Training

Editors Note: My new site is now at www.just-fly-sports.com Check it out for a wealth of information on jumping higher and running faster, all backed by research and practical experience!

I have been in the iron/plyometric game for quite a while, I first started reading about training when I was 12 years old, and was always fascinated with anything having to do with lifting or jumping higher, it was all new and fresh material to me. I dunked for the first time at age 14 at 5'11" without reading a single bit of internet training advice. My primary training method at the time was wall sits, leg extensions and playing basketball, very archaic according to todays standards. When I was about 16 years old (year 2000) I started searching the internet for training information. Of course, back then there weren't the forums that there are today, or hardly any of the information that you can find on some internet resources such as T-nation (was just getting started then) Now days, I see high-schoolers on these forums who are light-years ahead of where I was at the same age (knowledge wise), but here is something that I also see............their gains are similar or less than mine when I was their age. I think that maybe I just got lucky with the science of jumping program that I did, but I really improved a lot, without knowing an awful lot.

These days, I learn a lot off the internet, I have some great text books and reference guides here at home, but I probably get most of my knowledge off the internet. (I guess I had a few master's classes here and there as well......but who really cares about action potentials and cell membranes anyways?) Here is a fact though, that very few of us internet training junkies are willing to accept........how much have you improved since you found all this great training info on the net? I am not talking about how much have you put on your squat or clean or single leg BOSU squat while simultaneously playing ping pong.. How much has your vertical jump or sprint speed improved.?? Now I am sure for some, yes, it has increased, but I would make a fair bet that, for a lot of people out there, NO, I have not improved much at all in the last 2-3 years, even though I am learning all these new training programs/ideas on the web. (I am talking for the most part about people who have stopped developing physically, because you will gain speed no matter what if you are still physically maturing, From what I have seen I think that physical abilities (speed strength) no longer on their own develop due to physical growth around age 15-19, however, this does not account for "old man strength" which I am starting to develop.)

So what is the point of this entry? It is just this........practical experience in training trumps anything you hear on the internet regarding training, EVEN MY ENTRIES, hahaha.

Here is my recommendation for evaluating your training program and what you read online....

1. NEVER build a training program around 1 article that you read. Read many articles by different authors, and find the good things they have to say about certain methods and what the authors agree on as sound training methods.

2. STICK to your training program. Don't go for a month and say, oh, well this program really isn't working, I think I'll check (insert website here) to look for another program and see how that works for me. An exception can be made here if you made a terrible mistake in your program selection, but if you follow step 1, you shouldn't come across this. (note: of course, you are supposed to make changes in your program every 2-4 weeks if you are intermediate/adv, but I am talking about the basic structure of the program in regards to long term goals)

3. DESIGN your program with the long term goal in mind. If you have been training for 5 years, your goal should not be to put 4 inches on your vertical in a month. This is probably not going to happen, and if it does, it will be the most unstable 4 inches you ever put on your vertical (quickly gained/quickly lost principle). Try and find resources regarding long term training methods. www.athleticscoaching.ca has loads of GREAT free sport science articles, especially regarding periodization.

4. REMEMBER what has worked for you in the past, and try not to get far away from it in your own training. It is important to vary training procedures from year to year, but you need to know what works for you and what doesn't.


I hope these simple tips can help you in your quest for your athletic goal

Joel