strength training – Exercise Physiology

2020-12-032020-12-02

Effects of Different Forms of Resistance Training on Athletic Performance in Soccer

Author: Erik Sigman

In the past two decades there has been an increased discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of resistance training in regards to athletic performance in soccer. When it comes to emphasis on athletic enhancement, soccer has just recently become a sport where collegiate and professional teams have made athletic development a larger priority for players. There seems to be two camps when it comes to the debate on whether soccer players should incorporate resistance training in their training routine. Those in the first camp tend to think in a sense that resistance training won’t help a soccer player become better at “soccer skills” like dribbling, passing, shooting etc. The second camp tend to have the view point that soccer is evolving to become much more reliant on a player’s physical capabilities and resistance training may help athletic development in areas like speed, agility, and explosive power (Silva et al. 2015). Regardless of what camp one may fall into, there are some common beliefs in regards to the benefits and drawbacks of resistance training that the soccer world has adopted. Benefits include increased athletic ability in soccer specific actions like sprinting, cutting, jumping, and explosiveness (Turner and Stewart 2014). Drawbacks include player’s putting on unnecessary muscle mass, becoming “blocky” or “bulky”, and the injury risk of doing resistance training. With all that being said, let’s look at what the research says regarding resistance training and athletic performance in soccer.

2020-12-02

Relationship Between Body Mass and Muscle Strength: Correlation or Causation?

Author: Joey Harkins

Think of the strongest person you have ever met. Not in the pound-for-pound sense, but the individual that you can think of that can physically move objects that you might have thought could not possibly budge. This could be someone you played sports against in high school, someone you work with, or even someone you’ve seen on T.V. Chances are the person you’re thinking of isn’t too small. On the contrary, they’re probably one of the biggest people you’ve seen. There most definitely appears to be a relationship between body size and strength, but the question remains: is strength simply a product of increased body mass or are there more factors at play?

2020-12-012020-12-01

Concurrent Training in Primarily Power Athletes: Proceed with Caution

Author: Jared Defriend

During my younger high school, there was nothing I loved to do more than run for exercise. I think I ran almost every day during the week with my dog, and on the weekends, I would try to go on longer runs. However, there is an important piece I am missing to this story. I
played football, and not only did I play football, but I was also a lineman. I thought I could be the best endurance athlete ever, while still be a big, strong, defensive lineman. Little did I know I was destroying my potential, as the copious amounts of running I performed inhibited my ability to make gains on the field and in the weight room. Therefore, now I know that intense endurance training and power athletes, such as football players, just do not mix. For maximum results, power
athletes should stick with strong and powerful training, leaving the endurance stuff for who it was meant for: runners.

2019-12-192019-12-16

Effects of Creatine Monohydrate Supplementation on Muscular Strength and Sprint Performance

Author: Shane Feller

Introduction

The sports supplement industry generally receives a lot of negative feedback from the public due to the tendency of companies to overprice supplements, produce supplements that don’t work as well as they are advertised, and release supplements without much scientific evidence and research supporting their claims. However, one supplement that has a lot of research backing its claims, is creatine monohydrate. The most well researched sports supplement on the market, with over 700 studies testing its efficacy, creatine monohydrate has strong scientific evidence supporting itself as an effective supplement for muscular strength and lean muscle growth, while being fairly cheap in its base form compared to most supplements. In fact, price ranges for 40 servings of creatine are between $10 and $20. Generally, overpricing of creatine occurs when in the forms of creatine HCl and creatine ethyl ester, which don’t have nearly as much scientific research behind them, and usually contain an artificial flavor addition¹.

2018-12-19

Does whey protein actually help you gain muscle faster in strength training?

Author: Kolton Vinzant

There is so much hype about how to, according to normal everyday language, “get swole” faster. Of course, it is widely accepted that the type of training someone does affects how you accumulate muscle mass. For instance, endurance training such as running is going to yield different results than heavy weight lifting in terms of muscle mass gains. Now, there is a wide range of studies that have been done to investigate how whey protein assists in muscle growth with strength training exercises. To expand how this emphasis on supplementation has been such a fast growing topic, the first gym I ever gained a membership in my later teenage years very much surprised me in what the fitness trainers emphasized in terms of my goal to build more lean muscle mass. Initially, the fitness trainers at this gym asked me about what kind of exercises I believed would enhance my muscle mass the most. This was talked about for maybe 30 seconds. The conversation shifted immediately from what types of exercises are important for accumulating muscle mass to what supplements I was taking pre and post-workout, specifically whey protein. We discussed this for approximately 20-30 minutes. It came to my surprise that the emphasis of this conversation was placed on the whey protein supplementation I was going to do versus the type of exercises I was going to do. In my mind, the emphasis of the conversation would have been flipped. Ever since, I have always had the lingering question in my head… does whey protein supplementation make a significant difference in the rate at which you gain muscle mass in strength training?

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