Articles

Developing Lightning Quickness:
Neuromuscular and Bioenergetic Considerations
Part 1

Authored by Peter Twist
Trainer of Mark Messier, Pavel Bure, Hakeem Olajuwan, and 500 Professional Athletes
NHL Coach of 7 years, President of Hockey Conditioning Coaches Association

NEUROMUSCULAR CONSIDERATIONS

To improve quickness, training must focus on the neuromuscular system. Practice drills must be structured scientifically in order for the muscles to learn to fire more quickly and to allow the brain to rehearse specific movement patterns at high speeds. Nervous-system training produces stored motor patterns of explosive complex movements. Improvement is not a physical adaptation that requires overload but a neuromuscular adaptation that requires explosive and precise movement patterns with perfect technique. This kind of training increases the ability of the brain to turn on the machine more quickly. Nervous-system
training results in an increased firing rate of motor neurons, selective and maximal recruitment of fast-twitch fibers, quicker reactions, and more explosive force production.

Neurophysiological synchronization is needed to control and fire the appropriate muscle fibers in proper sequence to achieve the desired movement. This is critical given that many of the muscles contributing to sport-specific quickness are relatively small (lateral and medial rotators, adductors, and abductors) and not powerful enough for explosive contraction. Only through the summation of these smaller groups can the athlete achieve the desired movement pattern and velocity.

BIOENERGETIC CONSIDERATIONS

Synchronization is less than optimal when fatigue and lactate accumulation impede performance. So, from a bioenergetics perspective, quickness is improved exclusively with the adenosine triphosphate-phosphocreatine (ATP) energy system (thus through anaerobic training), and training is prescribed accordingly. In the game environment, however, explosive actions are often needed when the athlete is already in a fatigued state. At the end of a match, during a prolonged shift, or in overtime, the successful athlete will still be able to mobilize motor units to coordinate explosive skills under fatigue. This too is a learned ability.

DEVELOPING QUICKNESS

Coaches should evaluate athletes and then build the prequickness foundation. At all ages and levels, introduce quickness drill technique by incorporating the movements into dynamic warm-ups and agility drills. This affords athletes an opportunity to understand and rehearse the technique at casual speeds and provides the coach an opportunity to detect strength or flexibility imbalances that hamper technique execution.

At this stage, the athlete's readiness for quickness training can be assessed with a simple athleticism test. When the player performs a simple lateral stop-and-start drill, does he or she land evenly with both feet at the same time? Is the footprint consistent, or does the athlete land at different places throughout the drill? Athletes who fail this test must spend more time building their quickness foundation.

Coaches must teach and train quickness as a skill, not some genetic gift or elusive component that magically develops through standard anaerobic lactate-tolerance interval training or generic practice drills. Most coaches turn quickness training into circuit training, supersetting one plyometric drill after another. An athlete cannot increase the ability to activate muscles at a high rate by training while fatigued, moving slowly with flawed technique. Quickness practice is quality practice, not quantity practice. The athlete needs to do full-out
overspeed efforts for a few seconds followed by generous recovery.

Believe it or not, one professional head coach of athletes training for an anaerobic speed-power start still emphasizes continuous aerobic training as the main (and often only) conditioning and development method! Repetitive continuous aerobic training ultimately practices recruiting muscles for slow movements, which detracts from high-velocity contraction capabilities. Too much aerobic training preferentially activates slow-twitch muscle fibers, detracts from performance, inhibits skill improvement, and blocks development of explosive quickness. Complement and support quickness development with high-velocity anaerobic conditioning.

The athlete must be lean to optimize quickness. Excess fat weight does not contribute to force production and only provides an additional load to overcome. Physical development should prioritize the legs and the speed center, or core of the body (abdominals, lower back, adductors, abductors, hip rotators, hip flexors, hip extensors, and glutes), which initiates and powers all high-speed actions. Muscle hypertrophy in the speed center and leg muscle groups also lowers the body's center of gravity. Excessive upper-body hypertrophy in lieu of
lower-body mass raises the center of gravity, weakens dynamic balance and cornering, alters sports technique, and limits first-step quickness and multidirectional control.

Too often, ill-prepared athletes jump right into quick-feet drills. Some coaches and camps are overly concerned about appearing to be on the leading edge by using the "latest" drills with their athletes. Likewise, many personal trainers from a fitness background simply regurgitate memorized high-risk plyometric drills because they lack the knowledge and expertise to implement holistic sport-specific athlete development programs.

For quickness readiness, athletes first need efficiency of movement, which includes coordination, dynamic balance, agility, balanced flexibility, proprioception, and sports technique. They also require great leg and core strength, a low center of gravity, and anaerobic conditioning before progressing to explosive quickness drills. In building the prequickness foundation, balanced flexibility is the most critical. When athletes move past the foundation stage to pure quickness development, my program for them is constructed of 50 percent quick-feet drills and 50 percent micro-Stretching®, two components that in combination
hold great potential for performance enhancement. Micro-Stretching (see chapter 3) produces superior flexibility and, even more important, balanced flexibility throughout the speed center. The balanced flexibility contributes not only to the quick-feet drills but also directly to improved quickness. Because the muscles are a linked system and quickness is a skill that relies on perfect biomechanics, explosive technique is impeded by muscle imbalances. Serious muscle imbalances, in strength or flexibility, prevent dynamic balance and equal quickness in all directions.

A hockey player, for example, whose left quadriceps and hip rotators are stronger and more flexible than those on the right will tend to favor the left side. When backing up (gliding) on the ice, this player will have more body weight on the left side. If the defenseman must suddenly cut laterally to the left to angle off an opposing forward, a critical delay will occur before the defenseman can explode to the left because he or she must first shift more weight to the right leg to be able to push off to the left. This brief delay results in losing one-on-one battles. The problem is exacerbated by a tight right side, which limits stride length and power. Less flexible right hip rotators are a weakness that will be exposed when the defenseman opens up to turn to the right from a backward-to-forward skating position. The player will turn at a lower angle, thus limiting defensive coverage options.

More than 99 percent of athletes do not stretch properly. I have been conducting research with Nikos Apostolopoulos on stretching for explosive skill improvement. We have a group of athletes participating in a regular program of micro-Stretching, with no other training whatsoever (no strength training, no speed work, etc.). We measured their power, speed, quickness, and agility before implementing micro-Stretching to improve flexibility in the speed center and to make sure balance exists between flexibility on the left and right sides of the body and between opposing muscle groups. Then we conducted posttests. The preliminary results are exciting because the tendency is for players to improve their performance with flexibility training only. That includes improved sports technique, more powerful bodychecking, quicker starts, and better mobility. The key is how and when they stretch. Proper micro-Stretching has as much to do with inhibiting muscle-spindle and muscle-tendon receptors as quickness training does stimulating those receptors! A paradigmatic shift to micro-Stretching promises to make a strong contribution to quickness and explosive sports technique. The bottom line is to build the foundation first and then target balanced flexibility along with quickness drills to optimize explosive sports performance.

CONTINUED IN PART II

From High-Performance Sports Conditioning by Bill Foran. Copyright 2001 by Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc. Excerpted by permission of Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL. Available in bookstores or by calling 1-800-747-4457 or visiting www.HumanKinetics.com. $22.95 plus shipping/handling.