Lifting and muscle fibres

As sprinters, why do we bother with the gym? What adaptations come from being less 'specific'? What changes happen within muscle fibres after this type of training?
This episode covers a few different styles of programming, as well as some physiology and biomechanics chat. We hope you enjoy, and please drop us a message via Instagram if you want us to elaborate on anything further!

Transcript

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 0:00

Okay. Welcome back to sprint lab episode nine. Um, morning, Alex. I know it's afternoon,

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 0:06

Oh, afternoon. afternoon.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 0:08

We're back together. We're actually on the same call for the first time in like, what's it been like seven

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 0:13

Yeah, it's been ages, because obviously I went halfway around the world on holiday, and then by the time I got back, it'd been really busy, and we had a few pods lined up, so we didn't really need to,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 0:24

Yeah.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 0:25

need to hop on together. But then, when we did need to, we weren't around, so we kind of messed that up a bit, but

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 0:31

Differing schedules, but go on. This is where you've been. Where have you been

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 0:35

Oh, um, Singapore and Malaysia for a couple of weeks. Yeah. And then back to Lincoln for what feels like forever now. Yeah.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 0:45

Dave. Did you? Cause he went around there.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 0:46

Dave went to Malaysia and Bali exact same time. Well, a little bit offset to me. So we overlapped in Malaysia, but obviously he was in KL Kuala Lumpur and I was down in Penang. So didn't actually see him out there

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 1:02

Nice. All right. All right. Well, I don't know. I re I really don't know much about that side of the world.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 1:06

cheap as anything cheap and hot. Yeah.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 1:11

You didn't pick up Barley Belly, did you?

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 1:13

Nah, I didn't go, so I was fine. I think Dave did. Yeah, he destroyed some toilets since he's been back. That training,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 1:23

Right.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 1:24

But yeah, let's

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 1:24

Good start.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 1:25

skip that.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 1:28

Right. So the topic today, do you want to, do you want to describe what we're going to

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 1:32

Yeah, cool. Um, we're talking about so gym or strength based training for sprinting periodizing that during or throughout the season, but we're going to go quite into detail with essentially like the background of why we lift and remembering or reminding ourselves why we do that. And then also go into the types of muscle fiber types we can develop through this and how that applies to different events. And this was actually a suggested topic by someone who I know, Kai. Oh, I should probably find his Instagram so I can shout him out. I told him I would. Let me just get it. Right, I've got his, I've, I've found his running account. Right, it's, it's Kai, K A I F dot A T H. That's his athletics account. I think he's only like 15, but he's run sub 50 already. So

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 2:27

Bloody

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 2:27

even more follow up, because his main account ends in 07. So I think that's about 2007. So yeah, he's, he's already, he's already too good for us.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 2:37

Yeah. Right

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 2:38

yeah, trying to, I'm trying to teach you Islamic. I

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 2:43

right. Yeah. So lifting for sprinting. I think we'll probably just start with what we do at the moment, uh, and then build from there. Cause there's a few different approaches. Um, more than one way to skin a cat, but you know, let's just, let's just start with what we know then and speak about that. So do you want me to start or should you?

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 2:59

was thinking just even before, the reason we lift is

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 3:04

Uh,

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 3:04

just because, I think that makes more sense. So, the reason we lift in general is, To increase our body's ability at producing force and higher forces, because to move forward in sprinting, we generate what's called an impulse, which is force times the amount of time you're applying that force for, where you could either reduce the amount of time spent producing force. Cause obviously you want to be quick, or you can increase the amount of total force. And by going to the gym, we can do both sides of the equation, but obviously the main thing is to, um, Prove our ability of producing more force, um, so that we can travel further with each step because Increasing that increases our momentum, which is obviously how far we're moving or how quickly we're moving our mass So that is the reason we would go to the gym. So bear that in mind because a lot of people sort of forget Um, it's not about getting big It's about getting, increasing the ability to produce more force to move the mass, our body mass. Mm

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 4:08

Yeah. And in terms of power output, like power, obviously if you express equivalent force in a reduced timeframe, then you're going to increase your power output, but also, um, your power is limited by the amount of raw strength that you have as well, that's the equation. Like if you increase the force in the equivalent timeframe, then you increase your power output as well as the ideally you want to be reducing the timeframe in which you express an increased amount of force. Um, that's the goal of it all

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 4:35

Yeah. Cool. So what we do then, um, yeah, like you said, did you want to start with what you do? And then,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 4:43

Yeah, I can do. Um, so the past couple years, um, I've been literally just going for minimum dose in the gym. Um, I would go in, uh, and I kind of do like a, like a French contrast training style of programming where I do like a compound lift, heavy compound lift supersetted with like a plyometric exercise or like a dynamic Yeah. Okay. It sounds like a box jump or something. I don't know, just anything dynamic, super set with, for example, like a squat or a trap bar deadlift or something like that. And then I'd hit probably two or three accessories pretty hard, close to failure, um, as well. So, you know, like Nordics, calf raise, uh, any type of core exercise that those kinds of things. Right. Um, so my gym sessions were quite short and sweet. Um, and I would push, you know, a minimal number of exercises to, towards either neural or like muscular failure endurance wise. Um, and you know, the accessories would change regularly. The compound lifts wouldn't. So I'd get a chance to, you know, really cultivate like a decent amount of strength in the compound movements, still have some dynamic work in there with the plyometrics and then, um, rinse the accessories for all the worth. in terms of that, uh, like structural adaptations that they would bring. Um, but I haven't changed it recently, uh, this season to a bit more of, I don't want to say like fully like a triphasic style approach, but I do cycle through like eccentric bias lifting, isometric sort of pause lifting and then concentric lifting, uh, concentric, um, style lifting, like as a. three phases. I cycle through that quite quickly. So I've spent, you know, one to two weeks on each phase and, and my lifting has become less about, uh, making it kind of dynamic or, um, specific, not that it ever was, it's become less about that and more to do with like, what are we in the gym for? We were just there to get stronger, you know, um, just there to like, Become like a bit more athletic and then my track stuff that I do enough volume of that to take care of the specificity and the, those aspects of performance in. My actual sport,

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 6:54

nice. So on my case, then I don't really program it as carefully then as you, I guess. Like, I don't Go phases. I just have a period of time during the winter where I'm focusing on more slow, heavy lifting to just improve total force production. And as you, as that the month turns towards December, by the time December hits, I'm moving less weight or less total mass quicker, uh, but still not like the same as I would be outdoors. Um, and I don't prioritize my gym as much as I prioritize actual running. So like for me, I think you get a lot more transferable gain, I guess, direct transfer benefits from doing a sport rather than the gym is just to supplement it, in my opinion, but at the same time, you can't ignore the fact that you need to do the gym to produce force or to increase your ability, like we're saying, to increase force.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 7:56

I think attitudes have shifted towards the gym in the past sort of 20, 30 years. Um, because I remember like reading a few accounts of runners in like the 60s, 70s, that kind of era. My attitude very much was, um, if I'm in the gym, I'm not running, so why would I be in the gym? And that's obviously not the most productive, um, standpoint because you can't just keep mashing the button of running, uh, because eventually you're going to run into a wall, you're going to get injured or something like that. And, you know, I can tell that I've, I've taken, you know, three, four, five months. off the gym at certain points in the past kind of three, four years. And I really feel it in terms of how, how many little like pains you pick up through like a competitive period. It's really just been a desperate attempt to like reduce, um, load. in that time. It's not the wisest call at all, but it was just at the time it was, it was what made the most sense. Um, but looking back and reflecting, like, I wouldn't do that again because it's just not as practical long term to, to do that. You know, you, you do need it as a consistent part of your model training.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 9:03

think the benefit, people have obviously heard of this term newbie gains and noob gains, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. You know, the first adaptations you get from just going to the gym after a long time. And so those benefits aren't actually your muscles getting stronger, like the muscle cells. I mean, it is a little bit, but it's mostly like a neural adaptation that your brain sends signals better and you able to coordinate contractions quick better and then produce more force that way. And I think the benefit of having periods, like you said, of like a couple months off. is when you go back to it, you get this newbie game sort of thing. After a couple of weeks, just to train and again, you do like, you pick it up quicker again, if that makes sense. So it is like, sometimes it's like, obviously you don't want to be away for extended periods without a gym because like you say, you're going to start to feel things, but. I think, like you say, when you're programming your and how I program mine is that that heavy, slow sort of lifting just throughout winter and then that is less of a priority while I'm racing, but then when it comes back to winter, then you get these newbie gains from that again. And it's like, you feel benefits more than doing it year round, year round.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 10:13

Yeah, I think in hindsight, uh, the most beneficial way of going about like reducing weightlifting load in season would be literally to do the bare minimum so that you would maintain those newbie gains and not really chase after anything that's hard to combine improvement

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 10:27

that's it.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 10:28

Such a low volume of work needed to maintain your basic kind of Um, yeah, just just the gains you get from the first couple weeks of lifting. Like that. How? How difficult is it to maintain that level? It's not hard. Um, the difference in well being and resilience to sprinting is just having that increased level of, um, strength or power or whatever you, whatever you go for in the gym. Um, it just makes a big difference. And that's what I do in the future.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 10:58

you have to be very, very sedentary, like in your day to day life to actually feel like muscle wasting start happening once you've got those gains. Like it's very hard for them to just. To go that quick is, it's this, that's, that's a good thing about muscle adaptations is they, they, they are quite long lasting effects. So you don't actually need to like, go like to the push to your max. It'd be like sprinting every single time. Although if you are trying to get stronger, you do, if that makes sense. So after the newbie games, it's very hard to actually start increasing your like, like hypertrophy and people, people would like go to the gym, get bigger after a few weeks. And then it's really hard for them to get bigger again or stronger again. That's because it's, you need to be really at the top of like at the limit of breaking down muscles and then letting them recover properly. Like twice as long for them to recover stronger and then break them down again. And it's the, the point is you don't really need to be doing it after the initial gains up to a certain point, like

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 12:07

Yeah, obviously if you're chasing elite levels of strength or whatever to supplement elite levels of track performance, then you might need to be, you might need to be 8, 10, 12 years deep into your, into your weightlifting journey to really have rinsed out those adaptations. But yeah, if we're talking about, you know, getting quick and easy gains and holding them there so that you're, um, you're surviving, you're able to just do your track training problem free. And yeah, it's not, it's not too difficult at all. Honestly, I'm, I'm finding benefit from just doing one uppers, one lower session a week. And I, I hesitate to block off lifting into like uppers or lowers or, you know, like a push pull legs. That's just, yeah, that's not wise. But what I'm talking about is, um, like in the upper sessions, deloading literally my lower

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 12:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 12:57

through my upper body, core, those kinds of things. And then on the lowest day is like, right, I'm trying to, I'm trying to hit my legs and my core hard here. Um, and by core, I don't mean like, you know, smashing Russian twists and sit ups either. I mean like heavy compound lifts because the core, you don't train the core through doing 500 reps a session of pulses or whatever. You train it through like a heavy lifting and pushing it to failure in, in a rep range that makes sense for every muscle group, not just your abs.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 13:28

yeah. Core training probably deserves this whole podcast of itself because it's very misunderstood. And yeah, um,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 13:37

It's treated very

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 13:38

goes down to that

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 13:39

a lot of reasons.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 13:40

because that's, that's, there's a lot to uncover in that. Um, I want to try and avoid that right now. Just

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 13:45

Yeah.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 13:46

we'll go on a tangent and never come back.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 13:48

yeah, yeah.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 13:49

right. Yeah. No,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 13:51

You touched on, um, like, heavier, slower lifting early doors and then, and then, um, deloading the weight a little bit towards a competitive season. Um, I'm not sure how far you stray into this, but I think this is a mistake that a lot of people make is where they kind of go for like, well, they go to the gym and drop the weight and try and move it faster with the, with the. Idea being that they're going to be able to move their limbs faster on the track as a result of the faster movement in the gym. And that's kind of not, I don't think that's quite the same as what you were saying.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 14:24

So

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 14:25

So the, the, the pitfall that I think people fall into is thinking that the limb velocities of their lifting, um, you know, when they drop the weight and they try and move it quicker are anyway transferable to like sprinting. But they're, they're really not, they're not anywhere near close to the same. So the transfer won't be in limb velocity. The transfer will be like neural recruitment and it will be like a deloading kind of bounce back effects recovery wise, um, that improves your performance on the track, not, you know, like I said, limb

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 14:56

yeah, spot on. Yeah. So I think it's important to get into people's heads that if you're moving under a load, even if it's a light load, that is more load on the body than you are if you're running already. So obviously. It was just logically thinking that actually you're going to be moving slower than you would if you were running. So you can't say you're, that's the same with like loading plyos or something like you, it's not the same if you had an assisted plyo and or an assisted lift with like bands pulling you or someone pulling you, then you're starting to actually train that limb velocity. Kira's spot on in that it's just the ability for your brain to send signals to recruit muscles a bit better, a bit quicker. It's a bit closer. To write in but it's not going to directly improve how quickly you move your limbs and switch your legs or something.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 15:48

Yeah, I think this, this is a whole nother podcast episode as well, but I'll just, I'll just hint on this is, is where people go wrong with resisted sprinting as well. So like hills or, um, like sleds or anything like that is if, if your speed work in the off season or winter period is exclusively on the load or slower than on a track in spikes. If you've not got any fast running in spikes. Your limb speed is going to massively decrease. If you're just doing hills or just doing resistant accelerations all the time, and that's not going to have as much of a transfer to your speed as sprinting would. So that, like I said, it's a whole other podcast, resisted sprinting. We'll do that some of the time. Um, it's the same principle, you know, you need to be moving at or in excess of. Uh, the limb speed that you want to target, um, for you to actually have that transfer. so let's go into, uh, like some different styles of programming that people might be doing already and, um, or kind of give, give a verdict on like, not, not necessarily give a verdict on how useful they are, but how to actually get the most out of those individual styles of programming, because I'm, I'm conscious that some people will be like within college programs or under coaches that are like dictating this to them, and they might not have a choice other than just to, you know, go along with it, but like, how do you actually get the most from this? one of the classic, um, approaches that I've seen is that you're doing really high rep, high volume stuff early in the off season and then transferring that into kind of lower, but higher intensity lifting in season. And what you may also see is like larger ranges of motion used in the off season and then minimal ranges of motion used in season. So you may see like, Full depth squats in October, November, December, but you might use like quarter squats or pin squats in the stomach. So that's, that's, um, Fairly standard, I think, among a lot of athletes, and that's, you know, it's okay. Um, the only thing I would say on that style of programming is it does tend to, stack all of the kind of heavy eccentric loading or full range, range of motion training within one part of the year. And those aspects, if you don't touch them on them again for like months at a time. So whilst you may be sat in January with really good strength through range, you might be quite mobile. and you might be like, you might be a bit beaten up by all the eccentric loading. so there's positives and negatives in that period of time. But then also when you get to the summer, you may lose quite a lot of that strength through range. You may become a little bit less mobile. You may have a really high kind of output in terms of raw force production in certain angles, but you'll, you'll have suffered in others. And, uh, definitely benefits to both that I think is worth cycling through that style a little bit faster. And I'm aware I haven't given any like concrete rep ranges either, but I'm talking like, you know, if you're doing like 10s, reps in the offseason, and then you're going down to like 3, 4, 5 reps in season, you know, that sort of transition, there's, there's aspects of both styles of programming you need from, you know, Like at the same time, in performance, and I don't think it's worth stacking all of that work in one part of the year and ditching it in the other.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 18:55

here, that's interesting as an alternative then you're suggesting Like a concurrence or a model a bit like

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 19:04

Sort of, yeah, so you could either go concurrent, or you could cycle through it a bit faster, so instead of like a, a three month, kind of, like, hypertrophy slash strength block, you could do like a, you know, three month. Three one month segments where you're focusing a little bit more on eccentric loading, hypertrophy, whatever in the first one, it's transitioned to a bit more strength based lifting in the second one. And then you might be more dynamic or, or like, you know, just, just shooting for heavyweights in the third and then deload for in season. And then you can repeat that cycle again. And the benefit is you can be a lot more flexible with like how and when you program that stuff. So you can, you can turn on very short notice into any other phase, um, because you never stray too far from each one. You know, more than like six to eight weeks away from, you know, whatever given characteristic, and that's not going to be enough time for that to completely leave you. Um, so that, that would be, uh, advice that I would give to anyone following that style of program. And it's this exact same advice that I would give to someone that's following like a, a long to short approach on the track, you know, you don't want to do all your endurance work on one part of the year and all your speed work and the other, it's just the same thing. All the type, there's the kind of the kind that I mentioned before, French like contrast lifting, where you do like heavy, a heavy lift supersetted with a plier. I think that approach kind of makes sense in terms of time saving. cause it's very handy to, to kind of get both on at the same time, heavy lifting on pliers. it can be a bit of a challenge fatigue wise, like in the moment. to go from like a, you know, a really heavy squat or something to then trying to jump as far as you can. It can be a little challenging there, but you know, it's okay if you manage it. Fine. Um, have you ever tried that style of programming?

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 20:46

I haven't, no, not for training, but I've tried, um, well, I haven't tried it, but I've seen a lot of evidence, research based evidence on performing a near one rep max immediately before a block start. And it, the brain gets used to that maximal excitation of muscles. And when it's in that state, you're able to produce more force in blocks. Okay. Because it's, it's just primed, I guess, is what happened and it's primed to produce more force. Um, and it's similar to like a producing maximum force in your lift or high force in your lift and then a plyo issue when you, you can fully intend that, fully intentionally load that plyo a bit like with max effort. Um, so you're going to get a better plyo out of it while also hitting your lifts.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 21:35

Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about, um, post activation potentiation, aren't you? Like the general phenomenon that that is, um, that depends on like. How good you are as an athlete, really, you can handle a higher intensity stimulus through the lift if you are a better athlete because you have higher force production capacity, and you can still recover from that in the short time frame. It depends on the rest period as well that you're given. So you wouldn't want to literally get to the top of the squat, rack the weight and then just try and broad jump out of it. You know, that's, that's like, that's gonna be really tough because your legs are gonna be

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 22:08

Well, yeah, that's why I say I've never done it, tried it and train in a program because it must be, it must, it must take a bit of trial and error as well to get right with individual athletes because it's going to be different for everyone.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 22:21

Yeah, it's highly individualized. Yeah.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 22:24

yeah, that might be something I'll try one day, but

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 22:27

Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I played around with it for a couple of years. It was fairly successful Um, I don't think it's about style of programming whatsoever And I think you can there's varying degrees of executing it well, and it's very individualized. Yeah, so I wouldn't just map my own Performance of it right onto someone else There's some like you said trial and error Um, there's there's kind of a triphasic approach to training that i've mentioned that i've moved on to a little bit You Uh, but like I said, I tend to cycle through the three phases, um, quite quick again, like six weeks at a time, two weeks eccentric bias, two weeks isometric where I'm pausing in the inner left and two weeks concentric where they're just kind of regular up and down lifts, but that only with a compound that's really my accessory stuff has pretty much stayed the same. Um, I'm experiencing nice like strength progressions in that way. and not a lot of speed plateauing because I don't hang around in the eccentric phase for that long. That causes muscle soreness. Obviously, eccentric loading is what drives like muscle and structural adaptation of tendons as well. So, you know, it's good. It's good when you cycle through it quickly, but I wouldn't want the heavy legs for five, six weeks at a time. Uh, so I'd keep it short and sweet. If you're an athlete trying to sprint every week. Um, you need to be kind of touching on stuff to, to maximize the first sort of newbie gains of a, of a phase and then, and then just leaving it there, I think.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 23:51

cool. Yeah. At the start of the episode, just cut me off if you wanted to talk more on that, but I was saying maybe bring it back to the type of adaptations that happened to the muscle fibers themselves through lifting because, okay, generally speaking, there are different, so muscle fibers have. different properties and they're actually pretty cool. And my background is not strictly physiology. I've done physiology in my study and time. So I've clued up on it, but I'm no expert, but essentially there is a spectrum along which a muscle fiber will be, and a muscle fiber is just like a muscle cell. And you've got the type one fibers, which are your slow twitch, high fatigue resistant, but low force producing fiber types, which are going to be more predominant in, even in sprinters in muscles like, I don't know, the lower back or the calf where at least postural muscles, because they're going to be activated a lot of the time of the day. So they need to be resistant. At the other end of the spectrum, you've got your type two X fibers, which are super fast twitch. And actually when labs do lab, like physiologists who actually take muscle biopsies a lot, they hardly ever see these depending on age, gender, what you do. They're very, very rare in, in humans. They're more prominent in stuff like cats. Um, so that's type two X.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 25:23

Okay. Yeah, that makes

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 25:24

Yeah, similarly. Yeah. And those are very, very, very powerfully contracting, but very. prone to fatigue quickly, essentially. So the opposite of type ones and in between, but closer towards type X, you've got type two, a fibers. So type two was split into two a and two X. And these are like fast twitch muscles that most humans will have. The reason I called it a spectrum before is because actually there is muscle fiber types all in between these, which are either a mix of both. somewhere between both or like just random messes and that tends to happen when you don't train. So untrained individuals, so, so you have the pure muscle fibers, which are type 1, 2a, 2x, which when you train a muscle fiber becomes pure essentially. So you typically get exactly. So when you take a biopsy, You'll see it's very clear that 2a. What tends to happen when you don't train and like, you're very sedentary, muscle fibre, I guess, just doesn't know what it's supposed to be doing and it sort of transitions to do between two types. so your 2a is type, transition towards, some will transition towards more type 1s and some towards type 2x. And that's when they're like, Like in really sedentary, lazy people, you actually see the fastest twitch muscle fibers because it's strange. Um, but it's just, they don't, either the muscle doesn't know what it's doing. So it's like, Oh, should I be a two X or should I be a two X? And it just does that. Or it's like, okay, I only need to contract once a day to get out of bed. So I be a two X, literally. So, um, yeah, that's like what happens to muscle fibers through training. So when we're trained in a muscle. In the gym, it's we're not actually training it to be more fast twitch, which is funny. We're actually training it to be more toe 8, um, or become a more pure muscle fiber, um, muscle fiber type. Now, obviously in sprinting, you're going to want more type 2 fibers than you are type ones because they're going to produce more force. They're going to contract quicker. Um, so many more properties, which benefits sprinting more than they do That more than type ones can. so you want to avoid essentially training towards fatigue. It's, it's not rocket science at the end of the day, if you're starting to fatigue a bit and you're pushing through it, your muscles are going to transition towards more type one. Um, yeah, they're going to be, okay, he's pushing his body here. Let's go, let's become more type one and more fatigue resistant. Um, and you can get a chain and chains and chains of muscle fibers next to each other within a single muscle and one would be type one and then one next week could be a type two X and then the next three could be type one. It's really weird how they work. Um, and I don't even know if physiologist fully explained this yet, but that is just the majority of fibers you want for sprinting will be type two way in your power producing muscle. Now, when it gets confusing is like in biomechanics, this is now my background, my domain, we have this universal principle known as sequencing of events. So you want to produce your most force from your powerful muscles, like your glutes and your hip by the hips. You want them to be contracting for, for longer, because then you can really produce more force over a period of time.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 29:12

Whilst they've got the most

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 29:14

Exactly. And then at the peak, as those get towards the peak, you want your next muscles and your hamstrings around the knees and stuff to start contracting, which are not quite as strong, but still stronger than your calf alone. And then as this gets to the peak, you want your calf on and then your toe muscles on, and it's like a sequence of events. So by the time you get to like. You're carving stuff, but you got very short time to turn on and off the muscle. Um, but then I said, your car is generally more fatigue resistant. So it's hard to find balance of training, especially when we're humans. We, the way we walk around and the way we're actually evolved is to be. like endurance runners and be resistant, it's quite hard to, because all of a sudden, if you start training those muscles in a way, you're actually making them turn on even more, which makes them more fatigue resistant. So it's really hard balance to strike. Go on, go

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 30:19

think it's worth saying that, like, it's not worth, one, thinking about this whole sequencing thing as you're running, because like, printing is an extremely instinctive, I know what some people are going to do after listening to this, they're going to go out onto the track, they're going to be thinking, right, I'm going to contract my glute, and I'm contracting my quads and hamstrings, and I'm contracting my calf, and they're just going to be thinking about it in their whole, their whole life, and it's just, don't. Right. Muscle sprint fast, fucking go home. Don't think about it. But the point is your coach should be thinking about it. Or someone that's analyzing performance should be thinking about it. Sprinting is instinctive. This is the principle that lays behind it.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 30:53

my whole point, that was not my intention, sorry. My point was,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 30:57

I

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 30:57

is like, yeah, this is the science behind it, and it's so complicated that you don't really need to know it. Just do your thing, because this will just take care of itself. That's just what happens. And if you start thinking too much about, oh, I need to train this muscle fiber type, Something else is going to happen and you're going to end up training the wrong one, just because that's how the body will work and it just adapts. So just don't really think about it too much. Um, just stick to what Kieran's been saying about phasing your programming, um, increasing So, Total amount of force you can produce because your body wouldn't just slow it out. You can't, you can't control what muscle fiber you're producing. Exactly. Um,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 31:41

Yeah. So it's a lot

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 31:42

can guide it. Heh

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 31:44

you can guide it like, like, um, bumpers in a bowling alley, but not, not in terms of, uh, you know, like squeezing a pipette into a conical flask. You're not going to be that

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 31:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 31:55

Yeah. It's a tough one. It's not, it's not an exact, uh, well it is an exact science, but it's not worth trying to get into the exact science when you're out

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 32:02

No, 100%. You want it to be mindless, thoughtless. Sprinting thoughtless. Um, yeah,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 32:07

Uh, one or two cues, maybe that's it, but you know, it's, it's interesting though, the interplay between, you know, what, what we get done now off the track. I was going to say outside the track, off the track, and then on the track, it's kind of, you want to build yourself up in the gym to have the potential to then express those skills and the athleticism and the power that you build, on the track in a more specific arena. It increases your capacity to perform, but then actually performing comes down to, you know, how well you can funnel that

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 32:34

yeah, yeah,

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 32:35

technical aspects.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 32:36

yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like someone has all the genetic potential in the world to be great. It's like, but then they never train and then they haven't tried a sport. It's like, okay, so you're not actually going to achieve it. It's a similar sort of thing. The gym just allows you to be able to, but if you don't actually do the running, you're not going to get the benefits from it.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 32:59

that's, that's been like a decent chunk of time. We, we didn't even really touch on like, you know, like rep brain use or specific kind of exercises that are ideal or anything like that. But I don't, to be honest, this has been more of like a, let's say principles based, um, conversation. I don't think we need to get into all that and make it a massively long podcast. We might do it another time if you need to, but. Yeah, it's been, I reckon it's been good Uh, episode nine, it was episode nine, episode 10, as I thought it was. Um. And yeah, we'll see you

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 33:29

Yeah. Cheers folks. Yeah. Cheers.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 33:34

Do yours again. Fucking do that again.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 33:37

It's funny. You've got to leave that in. Yeah.

kieran_1_10-20-2024_143725 33:39

Right.

alex_1_10-20-2024_143724 33:40

for listening.