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Are there any Adarqorg members currently residing in Germany?


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Nutrition & Supplementation / Timing of Caffeine
« on: April 20, 2011, 01:18:10 pm »
Adarq,

I have testing (vert, 40, bench etc...) at 745 tomorrow morning.

When would you suggest waking up?

taking caffeine?



How much and in what form?

I hate coffee so thats not an option.

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Strength, Power, Reactivity, & Speed Discussion / High cut calves
« on: February 24, 2011, 11:17:11 pm »
One thing thats often said is it is a lot easier to jump high when you have high cut calves.

I have found generally this is true....BUT

I first noticed this when I was watching a stefan holmes (high jumper) hurdle vid

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG3_I3zFB0U" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG3_I3zFB0U</a>




Watch this video twice-- the first time to see how awesome he is and how easy he makes head-height hurdles look.

The second time skip to 23sec-32sec where you can clearly see his lower limb structure.
His calves are clearly not low cut-- his achilles is not very long at all.  especially at 31 sec they look frankly low-cut   :o

how could this be?  He is one of the best high jumpers (at least was) and successful on an elite level yet structurally he doesn't appear built for it.

This piqued my curiosity so I looked at the structure of other elite high jumpers:











In fact the only elite high jumper who I found had high-calves was the bahamanian donald thomas (who also was the only high jumper not of european descent)




i just thought it was interesting that these athletes who excel in jumping especially from a reactive point of view (their rvjs are much higher than their cmvjs) do not have high-cut calves


4
I just posted a study in the peer-reviewed studies section.  I thought it was very interesting and I think it pertains to training for the vertical jump (even though the study was aimed more at addressing why people who always wear high heels feel pain without them).

This is the study:  http://www.adarq.org/forum/peer-reviewed-studies-discussion/tendon-muscle-joint-stiffness/

it's the bottom one in the thread

An article that summarizes it is here:  http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/213/15/i?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=high+heels&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

.


The study focuses on women who had worn high heels for 2 years or more.  They then studied the calf muscle and achilles tendon to find out the effects of the high heels.  They found that the calf muscles are shortened:

"the high heel wearers' muscle fibres were 13% shorter than those of the women who wore flat shoes"

The researches then asked:  "by shortening the fibres, the muscles would have to contract more to shorten by the same length, and if this was the case the high heel fans' calf muscles could no longer function optimally and thus would produce less force than the flat shoe wearer's calf muscles. Had the shortened muscle fibres made it more difficult for high heel addicts to walk efficiently?"

They found out that: "The tendon had not lengthened to compensate for the shorter calf muscle. However, the high heel fans' tendons were much thicker and stiffer than the flat shoe wearers'. Narici and his team realised that by thickening and stiffening, the Achilles' tendon compensates for the shortened muscle fibres in the calf muscle, allowing the fashion addicts' calf muscles to function optimally as they walk"

So in conclusion the effect of the elevated heel was on increased tendon stiffness,  ultimately there is a down side in that you lose ankle mobility.  However, the increased in tendon stiffness is a huge positive.  I think it was on kelly baggett's site where I read something that stated that elite jumpers had tendon stiffness greater than the norm.  Furthermore, in another study posted here there is more favorable evidence for the advantages of tendon stiffness: "the stiffness of tendon structures has a favorable effect on stretch-shortening cycle exercise, possibly due to adequate storage and recoil of elastic energy."

So by wearing elevated training shoes, wouldn't we be eliciting somewhat these favorable adaptations (increased tendon stiffness).  Then with a proper stretching routine you could probably maintain ankle mobility and calf flexibility and get the best of both worlds--you'd have the added stiffness of the tendon as well as the increased range for the calf to contract over.


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When I get bored, I like to read through some of the old threads on the Charlie Francis website.  There are a lot of really knowledgeable coaches who post there and the discussions get really interesting.

I was reading through one of these old discussions when I noticed the user Christian Thibaudeau who was posting in 03 in his pre-T-Nation days.

The discussion was about the frequency of training for the olympic weightlifting teams of bulgaria and the other eastern bloc countries.

According to Thibs, one of the primary reasons for their style (multiple sessions per day) was  as follows:

Quote
2. Increased synaptic facilitation. There is evidence that motor learning is improved more by frequency of practice than by volume of practice. By training 2-3 times per day, event at equivolume, the motor learning effect is greater.

Vertical Jumping is a motor skill just like lifting weights is.  So wouldn't doing jump training multiple times a day on a training day be more beneficial?

I assume for a recovery standpoint it wouldn't be good to train every day but on training days this suggests that the optimal amount would be several (2-3) shorter jump sessions.  This should lead to better/faster results.

Thoughts on this?

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Introduce Yourself / Just joined... hello
« on: April 27, 2010, 06:47:02 pm »
Hi, thought I'd join.  Been going to this website religiously for the past couple months and finally decided to join and start a  training log and stuff...

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