Movement Economy: The D'Artagnan of Basic Limiters

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

A little addendum to my Endurance Corner article on ‘basic limiters’ today(http://www.endurancecorner.com/Alan_Couzens/basic_limiters) to address a ‘sort of’ basic limiter – movement economy.

In the article, I defined ‘basic limiters’ as those oft ignored elements of performance that are crucial to all athletes (and maybe all human beings) independent of whatever sport they participate in. In summary, those basic limiters are:

· Aerobic Base (Metabolic Fitness)
· Basic Strength
· Mobility/Stability/Muscle Balance

I half considered adding a 4th basic limiter of movement economy to the equation but it didn’t quite make the cut for the EC article so it wound up here on my personal blog :-) This is the ‘almost a musketeer’ limiter in the sense that while it has some elements that are specific to the individual’s sport, it is a general limiter in the sense that no matter whether your event lasts 2 seconds or 2 days, your ability to transfer metabolic energy into forward movement in the most efficient, economical way possible is a crucial ability.

This ‘sort of’ basic ability is made all the more tricky by the fact that many of our most basic movements are, when you break them down, incredibly complex. Take running for example, an economical run stride demands setting the body in the optimal position to utilize the elastic energy of the tendons coupled with an incredibly complex sequencing of rapidly contracting certain muscles while relaxing others so that inter-muscular resistance is minimized.

Swimming is even more of a mess. Not only must the timing of the optimal contract-relax sequences be figured out, but due to the nature of the resistance, the most economical type of stroke changes with different speeds of movement! Having a longer vessel (and maybe even a slight pause in the stroke) becomes progressively more important with increasing speed.

Contrast these with the relatively simple sport of cycling or basic lifting (which both have a much more steady application of force) and you see how there can be quite a discrepancy between 2 equally ‘powerful’ athletes on the bike (or gym) when it comes to swim and run speed/economy for a given output.

You may be movement economy limited if….

If I were a comedian I’d go Jeff Foxworthy at this point but I’m an exercise scientist so straight to the data…
· Your 30s power on the bike is >7w/kg and you can’t break 30s for a 200m run sprint.
· You can do 12 pull ups in 30s but can’t break 30s for a push start 50m freestyle sprint.

Note: I’m deliberately using short (non specific) tests here to take out the complicating factor of aerobic vs movement economy in longer tests, i.e. fitter athletes will get more mechanical work out of each liter of O2 independent of their movement economy (Coyle et al., 1991)

If you think that movement economy may be a limiter for you…

Incorporate things that teach you to get movement from quick force application followed by relaxation both in the water & out – Light Plyometrics (upper and lower), Agility Drills (dryland and aquatic – learn to accelerate!), Kettle bell/Medicine Ball Work, Jump Rope.

Note that movement economy is also contingent on mobility. For example in running, even if you’ve learned to switch the hip flexor off during the drive phase of gait, if you come up on the limits of your flexibility, it will slow you up!

Mobility is even more of a limiter to economical swimming. If you want to be fast as an adult athlete (over any distance/sport) get a basic level of mobility!

If you suspect that economy may be a limiter, the early season is the perfect time to work on these core issues of mobility & learning to move efficiently.

Train Smart,

AC.

No Guarantees: The Disclaimer

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

"You may have the best laid out training plan yet still fail to get the results you are after, for the very simple reason that you are alive, complex, and affected by a great many variables that you cannot possibly account for—from moon phases to the health of your cat."
- Pavel Tsatsouline (Russian Strength Guru)

This past week I tweeted about a great book that I’m reading at the moment by strength coach (and legend in the world of strength sports), Dan John. The title of the book is “Never Let Go” This is another book that highlights just how similar athletes and, to an extent, training principles are across sports. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Anyhow, on to the topic of this post....

Dan makes a great point in the book about the relationship between conditioning and performance in different sports. He presents a theoretical continuum from sports with a near perfect correlation between strength in the weight room and performance on the field, e.g. powerlifting at one end, and sports where the relationship is a little more tenuous on the far end, e.g. football. That is to say, that while it’s hard to argue that being stronger would be a negative in the game of football, having the physically strongest team is no guarantee of success. Tactics, skills, psychology along with a little plain old luck, all get tossed in the pot with physical conditioning to determine the ultimate winner on any given Sunday.

While the above is a generally accepted fact in the world of team sports, I’m not so sure that in the endurance sports world of individualism & ‘out working’ the competition it is as readily accepted. Accepted or not, it is a fact that, particularly in Ironman racing, it’s not always the fittest athlete who wins.

I’m in a better position than most to attest to this. I religiously watch the benchmarks and fitness numbers of the athletes that I coach over the course of their season. I’d be lying if I said that I don’t get excited when I see the athlete reach life best fitness numbers. However, every additional year that I spend as a full time coach, this excitement becomes a little more tempered, because every year, without fail, I have an athlete or 2 who don’t manifest the promise of their training numbers on ‘game day’.

The reality is that, just like football, basketball, soccer etc, while being the fittest guy on the start line is a good starting point in Ironman triathlon, it is no guarantee of success. Pacing, psychology, nutrition, climate & luck can all conspire to make a very fit athlete a mid packer on ‘any given Sunday’ To make the deal even a little more sour than it is in the team sports, the coach can’t deliver the post game pep talk of ‘we’ll get em next week’. Nope, the best the Iron coach can do is ‘we’ll get ‘em next year’! Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising then that for many folks the thought of not getting what they ‘deserve’ from a year or mores worth of training is too much to bear. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me but it does!

Truth is that the very appeal of this sport to me is that it’s really hard to pull off ‘the perfect race’. It’s the same sort of appeal that I suspect draws folks to Everest. You can do all of the right preparation, hone your skills, climb every smaller peak that you can muster but the reality is that there are no guarantees come ‘the day’. Perhaps it will happen, perhaps it won’t but for the truly committed (addicted?) fundamentally, it doesn’t matter. A failed attempt will only heighten the challenge and strengthen their resolve. To me, Ironman triathlon, like climbing Everest, isn’t a sport for the ‘dabbler’, it’s a quest!

Perhaps this mindset is a surprise to those of you who see me as a ‘numbers guy’, as an input output guy and it’s true, I get a lot of fun out of controlling the controllable. I get a lot of fun out of saying that if you do this and do that then I can predict with the highest level of mathematical certainty that your performance on race day will be X:XX and I’ve little doubt that if I took these skills back to a sport like pool swimming, my reputation as a prophet would be bolstered :-) However, I stick with triathlon precisely because of the level of uncertainty, because of the number of factors that need to come together to create the perfect race. I stick with triathlon because I can’t think of a sport that offers a more challenging quest to both coach and athlete. If I’m coaching you, I hope you do too.

Train Smart (and with passion),

AC