I wanted to point out one other interesting thing about Olympic high jumper Amy Acuff. She does no conventional weight training:
"I stopped all conventional weightlifting in December. People would think that's crazy, you have to do a bunch of squats and cleans right now, but I'm convinced it can be counterproductive."
Instead, she does Pilates:
"I find that the pilates training really gives me a lot of refinement and efficiency in my movement because at this point me being successful is not about me having the brute strength to be better than anyone. It's about training and utilizing all the stretch reflexes you can have in your body and maintaining strength and elasticity and power through a movement."
Interesting!
Just goes to show that you can be a great athlete and not know what the heck you are talking about.
Olympic lifts are essentially a jump with weights, so obviously they use the stretch reflex. On the other hand, pilates does not use the stretch reflex in any muscle so far as I know, and if it does it’s probably some foo foo move that no where near approaches a similar point on the force-velocity curve as high jumping.
Soooooo, what is she talking about? It’s nonsense.
Neal SHE says it’s counterproductive.might be an n=1 thing. As a person who has been competively immersed in physical culture for most ofe her life….. She might have just found what works for her. Fair?
Remember the football player Hirschel Walker? He did mostly pushups and situs and lifted no weights.
Marc
Neal, I would say she’s talking about the benefits of avoiding overtraining, while maintaining active rest with light full-body mobilizing workouts.