P&P#8

P&P #8. High Speed Training May Be A Serious Misnomer.

Numerous texts talk about speed training, speed-strength training or high speed training, yet they often furnish inadequate details about the muscle TENSION associated with this so-called speed-oriented training. If one trains at constant high speed (if somehow this be possible by some original procedure or by the use of 'isokinetic' machines), this implies that there is no acceleration and from Newton II (F = m.a), this means no force and no muscle tension. Hence no training effect. This we all know to be nonsense for several reasons (you may elaborate, if you wish).

Rather let us do what most folk do - refer to the well-known force- velocity curve which shows that the greatest force is produced at the lowest velocity (i.e. v = 0) and the smallest force at the highest velocities. They conclude that high speed training cannot produce adequate muscle tension to result in serious strength or hypertrophy gains. Conversely, Newton II shows clearly that the greater the ACCELERATION, the greeater the force and the greater the muscle tension. Does this not mean that high speed training really should be LARGE ACCELERATION TRAINING? So here we see that we must produce large forces by involving large accelerations, while the F-V hyperbola seems to indicate the opposite - namely that one must train at low velocity and acceleration to produce greater muscle tension. Could the Russians be wrong and there is no such thing as speed or speed-strength training? Do they not really mean ACCELERATION and ACCELERATION-STRENGTH training? Explain the apparent contradictions in these comments.

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