John Sinclair

When weight training for 50 meter sprinters, focus on explosive strength drills, speed-strength drills that emphasize generating power quickly and efficiently. Also allow for long rest times between sets to ensure the nervous system can recover.
 
Transcript: "Great question. Any specific weight training for 50 meter sprinters? Well, because we're talking about specificity then. What we want to do in the weight room is, we want to train at the same level of speed that they trained at in the pool. So everything that we would be doing, would be a lot of explosive strength drills, some speed, strength drills, and really try to emphasize generating as much power as quickly as possible. And how long Can we sustain that power 4 so we can do it mechanically. We could also do it metabolically. So using a different device other than swimming like like the bike. We could do some cycling Sprint's, we can do some running Sprints, just remember that when we're dealing with sprinters that we want to make sure that we are driving their nervous system and their central nervous system to produce high amounts of velocity. But remember that they also need a really long rest. At times. So when we're Olympic weightlifting, sometimes those are rest times can be anywhere from three to five minutes long and same thing. When we're sprinting, we want to give them lots of rest time so that the nervous system can recover from it. So I hope that answers your question. If you have any further details you want to get into. Send me a little video response below."

My favorite dry land exercises for swimmers are lunges, squats, jumps, lifting weights vertically and side to side drills. These drills help swimmers interact with the ground, which is a great compliment to being in the water.
 
Transcript: "All right. My favorite dry line exercises for swimmers happen to be anything that's done on the ground obviously. And that's because called dry land. But anything where we have to use the ground in different ways to have to teach the body, how to deal with ground reaction force is going to be awesome. So I like lots of lunges, lots of squats jumps doing drills where I have to lift the weights vertically. I love doing drills where I have to shift the weight side, Side to side because that's something that we don't usually get in the pool. And here's my dog puppy and those are kind of my favorite ones. So I think if we spend lots of time interacting with the ground, it's an amazing compliment to for those people that are constant in the water."

Preparing for athletic performance involves four key steps: fluid dynamics, small motor unit recruitment, activation and stimulation. Fluid dynamics refers to improving circulation in the body, while small motor unit recruitment is about teaching muscles to turn on and off. Activation is getting the muscles to shut off quickly while stimulation is activating the eyes, hands and feet. These steps help prepare athletes for their specific sport, such as shooting a ball, passing, running, or changing directions.
 
Transcript: "Hey Curt, thanks for the question. This is an excellent one and a really important one that we should cover. So I'm going to talk about four key things that we want to do in and preparing yourself for athletic performance. Number one is fluid dynamics. That's fancy term for circulation. We should do some sort of global circulation. And then the second part, is we need to do some local circulation. So maybe warming up a particular joint and or series of joints that are going to help with being able to mitigate Forest. But also to get that joint in the optimal. This axis of rotation, the second thing we're going to look on look to do is increase your small motor unit. Recruitments that's like get teaching muscles to turn on and then teaching them to shut off. So most importantly it's about just turning that muscle on getting that muscle to fire in a particular sequence, depending on the muscle that it is. So if you're a lacrosse player, then we want to be able to do some small motor yeutter unit recruitment for the hips, the legs and the spine, the third part, we're going to look at is Novation. Activation is really about turning muscles on but getting them to shut off quickly, so we call that excitation. So, the activation that I'm talking about is getting muscle to shut off quickly. So, you know, when you throw a lacrosse shot, we don't want those muscles to stay on, right? We want them to shut off so you can get some whip in your shot. So we would do something like, pull a band. Let it out real quick, pull up and let it out real quick or grabbing a towel and whipping a towel, right? So those are all things that we could do to tell a muscle to Off quickly. The other part of activation is stimulation and so, what we want to do is simulations, we want to activate the eyes, the hands and the feet. So what drills can we do to get the eyes moving, right in order to play lots of sports and prepare for athletics. You need your eyes to B function really well. We got to get the hands going. Need to stimulate different parts of the body. You'll see weightlifters. You'll see all kinds of folks. They'll slap themselves to fire the nervous system, and they're sympathetic nervous system up. And then the last thing we want to do is we want to excite your feet. We got to get your feet going from there. That's our general prep. And then we start working on, whatever your sport specific. Athletic preparation is going to be like shooting a ball, passing running changing directions, hope that helps, but"

When lifting objects in weird and odd positions, it's important to make sure that your shoulders stay as wide as possible and your spine stays as long as possible. This will help create leverage and anchor your body into the ground so you can feel safe and secure when lifting.
 
Transcript: "Hey John, this is a great question. Thanks for asking it. You know, Paul the other expert that answered this earlier, did an amazing job of explaining. What needs to happen with your pelvis. What needs to happen with your tea spine to support the lower back. So if you've had low back pain or you're currently in low back pain and you want to do some odd position lifts, you will need to make sure that you think of a couple key things. Number one is we want to make sure that your shoulders stay as wide as possible and your spine stays as long as possible. So if I have to go and reach for an object, I want to try to stay as wide and as spread as part with my shoulders and as long through the spine, and we call that the kite position. If you're to draw kite right, there would be a basically, that's the shape of a kite with a stem in the middle and across The cross bridge is the shoulders, the stem down the middle of the kite is the spine. We want to create as much length and width through that spine as possible. That's what Paul was talking about keeping a long spine. So, in the demonstration, they had where he's reaching and touching the ground. You can see that he created a very large space at the pelvis. So he was widened, his stance, he created a wide pelvis. This is going to Aid in creating leverage for you. Leverage is the most important thing that we could think. Think of when we're thinking about lifting objects so you want to position yourself, to give you the most leverage so that you can anchor into the ground. Be grounded, create a lots of tension in the abdomen to brace and protect the lumbar spine, stay in Long through the spine and that should put you in a really good position to feel safe and secure when lifting things in weird and odd positions."

To strengthen mid and lower posterior muscles, one can use bending forward against gravity or pick up objects to shorten the muscles. To increase flexibility, one can use static or dynamic range of motions.
 
Transcript: "Hi Paul. What is the best way to strengthen mid and lower posterior muscles and increase flexibility. Okay? So two parts to this question. One in order to strengthen middle the body or lower posterior muscles, what we need to do is we need to provide forces into those tissues to get them stronger. So the easiest way that we can do that is by thinking of the posterior muscles of the body. Are influenced in a couple different ways one when we are bending forward. So as we move forward in the body against gravity, those tissues are under length. And so, that's one way in which that we make those tissues strong or longer under load. Whether gravity's be in the driver, that's taken us there or were use an object that's taken us there in the form of, let's say, a medicine ball deadlift. So if I'm Reaching Forward, With that medicine ball. Those muscles have to lengthen and stay strong in order to keep my back strong. Now the opposite would be if I move and I pick an object up, that is shortening, those muscles and strengthen those muscles on the posterior side of the body. Now, the muscles on the posterior side of the body also have to be in balance with the anterior side of the body. In order for us to stay upright, those connective tissues and muscles need to be balanced between the anterior side and the posterior side. So we have optimal muscular tone between them and that we have good sequencing and and Rhythm, and timing and good neural connections between both sides of the anterior side and posterior side. Same can be for all the rotational patterns and for the lateral sides of the body. Now, to increase flexibility, there's two ways that we need to do. We need to do it statically. So, I can be have greater range of motions in a static environment. That's one way. And the second way is to improve ability through dynamic range of ranges of motion. So at different speeds, and different directions and under different loads,"

One of the most underutilized lifts or exercises for swimmers is a Reciprocating Press. This exercise involves pressing two weights out and in at the same time while also engaging the frontal plane motion of the pelvis. It can be done with a staggered stance to take pressure off the lower back.
 
Transcript: "Hi. I really love this question. So, what is one of the most underutilized lifts or exercises in your opinion, for swimmers? Well, one of the things that I like to think about is well, what planes of motion are those individual spending, a lot of their time in what are the movements that they're doing most of and then how can we kind of offset that in the gym? So I'm going to demonstrate one where we're doing a pressing movement because the experts mentioned some presses and I completely agree but we're going to do Reciprocating press. It means when one is going out, the other ones coming down. At the same time, we're going to do a frontal plane motion at the pelvis because we don't get too much of that in the water. So we're going to start here and then dry and I'm doing a staggered stance, which takes a little bit of pressure off your lower back. So I'm going to do it with one leg further forward than the other for a set. And then on my next setting is stagger my stance. The same idea. There you go, try that one out. See if you like it."