Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach (Bosch, 2015) Content Summary
Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach
(Frans Bosch, 2015)
Mark: I was able to order an English version of the original Dutch text based on the recommendation by my Physio mentor, Marilyn Adams. She spoke highly of the sessions he instructed for a High Performance Athletic organization.
In my circle, we are fond of the term “Sport Relevant” exercise as a conscious effort to replace the too popular “Sport Specific” exercise. I feel the only “Sport Specific” exercise is performed within the context of the actual sport (not the gym). I will retain the author’s (translated) use of the term “specific” as Bosch continually re-emphasizes “movement context”, and perhaps the original Dutch term is more intricate than the English translation, so I will remain true to the published translation.
Analysis and prescription of movement requires a comprehensive understanding of Learning and Motor Control theories, which Bosch dives into in Chapters 1 through 4. I will touch on some of these concepts in this summary, but will focus mostly on the practical chapters 5 thru 7.
At the center of his approach, Bosch blurs the boundary between technique and strength training. Strength training should mainly focus on the stable components (“attractors”) of the movement in order to be transferable to high-intensity movement. Intra- and inter- muscular qualities help build overall contextual patterns, important in keeping movements controllable. To challenge these fundamentals, variety as overload functions as unstable components (“fluctuators”) to expand movement generality to suit the environment.
Chapter 5 - Specificity Within Strength Training
Training Specificity and Transfer Into Performance Is Contextual - Specificity between different types of exercises is a precondition of transfer from the gym into sporting strength and power. To guarantee specificity, the design of strength training must meet many conditions to maximize positive impacts on athletic performance, and absolutely minimize negative effects.
Six categories of Specificity:
Similarity In Movement’s Inner Structure:
a. Intramuscular Similarity - within an individual muscle
b. Intermuscular Similarity - between different muscles
Similarity Movement’s Outer Structure - gross movement pattern / kinetics
Similarity In Energy Production
Similarity In Sensory Patterns - internal (proprioceptive) and external (environmental) monitoring
Similarity In Movement Intention
A systematic approach in movement analysis that appropriately balances risk-reward in these 6 (often competing) realms, and the specific exercises that reinforce fixation and generalization of movement is the basis of a high-performance program.
Goals of Positive Transfer:
Fixation of stable patterns - accurate, stable, repeatable performance
Generalization of movement adaptations - flexibility in a changing environment
Chapter 6 - Overload Within Strength Training
Variation As Overload - More in line with the principles of motor learning in response to training stimuli, increasing variability and decreasing specificity as a stimulus, an athlete creates adaptations which produce overload.
Central / Peripheral Model
There is an inverse relationship between specificity and overload demonstrated:
Central - high specificity, low variability / overload, high sport relevance
Peripheral - low specificity, high variability / overload, low sport relevance
Key Aspects:
There are no exercises that combine high specificity and significant overload.
Exercises that provide overload but are completely unspecific, or are very specific but provide no overload, are pointless.
Constraints Approach
The most important adaptations in sport-specific strength training are coordinative. The performance of movement depends on multiple constraints that challenge, not defeat, purposeful movement:
Variability In Environment
Movement should be contextual and intentional
Health and Safety - failed balance is not catastrophic
Variability In Task
Low to Mid-Contrast Differential Learning: accomplished by varying tasks within the limits of movement fundamentals (ex. Same task, different surfaces)
High-Contrast Random-Practice: alternating with other movement patterns (ex. Exercise clusters putting pressure on different movement mechanisms)
Variability In Athlete
Fatigue state creates overload / variation in the sensorimotor system
Young Athletes and Training Variation:
Each sport identifies performance-developing physical properties to alter body qualities (ex. Muscle power, metabolism, mobility, load capacity of tendons etc.) in a broader context, that may be at the expense of sport specificity
Establish good motor control library as the building blocks of coordination
Chapter 7 - Sport-Specific Strength Training In Practice
Contextual Strength Training - Optimal and positive transfer into athletics depends on numerous criteria being met, the most important being specificity.
A successful training program requires analysis:
Sporting movement - anatomy, biomechanics, motor control
Adaptations stimulated by strength training
Similarities between the sporting movement and the stimulated adaptations
Strength Training Type and Respective Adaptations:
Hypertrophy
Increased muscular volume / cross-sectional area
Substantial decline in coordination
Maximal Strength
Useful in sports involving isometric and elastic muscle action
Power
Movement specific re: rate of force development and deceleration
Reflex
Neuromuscular system loaded and developed by working with light weights in contextual reflex-supported movement patterns
The organization of a movement pattern into stable and unstable components may suddenly change (“phase transition”). Consequently, specificity between low and high-intensity movements is no longer guaranteed (ex. Walking mechanics are very different from running, and there is an abrupt change of one into the other with no mid-form).
Three Layer Specificity Model of Strength Training
Provides a systematic division of the exercises that, in combination with clear intention, makes it easy to navigate within the central / peripheral model and links up key aspects of training.
Intramuscular Attractors - stability of muscle action
Intermuscular Attractors - stability of muscular cooperation
External Attractors - stability of movement kinetics
CHAPTERS:
Chapter 1 - Basic Concepts of Strength and Speed
Chapter 2 - Anatomy and Limiting Influences On Force Production
Chapter 3 - Analysing the Sporting Movement
Chapter 4 - Fixed Principles of Training: Contextual Strength and Coordination
Chapter 5 - Specificity Within Strength Training
Chapter 6 - Overload Within Strength Training
Chapter 7 - Sport-Specific Strength Training in Practice