The World's Fittest Book: How to train for anything and everything, anywhere and everywhere

by Ross Edgley

• Strength is the body’s ability to generate force. • Speed is the rate at which someone moves. • Power is the product of strength and speed.

Defined as the body’s ability to generate the greatest amount of force in the shortest time possible, the faster your ROFD the quicker and more explosive you and your movements become.

Ultimately, what this means is that Athlete B takes longer to complete the lift and might therefore fatigue before fully locking out.

The depth jump can improve your speed in seconds. Put simply, Verkhoshansky would have athletes drop off a box, land on the floor – absorbing the shock – and then instantly jump as high as they possibly could.

This explains why during a depth jump athletes were able to jump higher. They effectively used the ‘elastic energy’ built up during the eccentric phase (when landing) to help them during the concentric phase (the jump itself).

This is because Verkhoshansky’s ’shock training’ was originally confined to improving jumping performance, while modern sports science uses plyometric principles to increase overall muscular speed and power.4 Basically, it goes beyond just improving the height of an athlete’s jump.

Scientists concluded: ‘The inclusion of ballistic exercises into a heavy resistance training program increased 1 repetition maximum bench press and enhanced power.’

you’ll see he grips the bar, performs three hamstring stretches and then on the third stretch he begins to lift. This is because he knows that performing two brief stretched, eccentric contractions can help to improve the subsequent concentric contraction.

But if you added some progressive resistance in the form of a resistance band attached to the bar, you’d add more resistance at the strongest point in your range of motion, therefore adding more resistance to better stimulate strength adaptations

found that, ‘when competitive lifters were compared, those typically utilising the heaviest loads (90% of their 1-rep max or higher), that is weightlifters and power lifters, exhibited a preferential hypertrophy of type II fibres when compared with bodybuilders. This data suggests that maximal hypertrophy occurs with loads from 80–95% 1-rep max.’16

Also the same study did state that bodybuilders experienced hypertrophy, ‘equally in both type I and type II fibres’.

But this does raise an interesting point that if you want to increase the size and strength of your muscles by targeting the larger Type II muscle fibres, Olympic-style lifting could form an integral part of your programme.

But in theory it makes sense to drill the technique and then incorporate them once or twice a week.

But including Olympic-style lifts in your training – again just once or twice a week – has been shown to send a natural, anabolic surge of hormones through the body.

The Force-Velocity Curve

But (again) all athletes should train along the force–velocity curve.

There is no best way to train for endurance. This is why – after analysing thousands of studies from years of research – scientists from the Department of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Hull stated there is no universally agreed consensus on the best way to train for endurance sports.

They concluded that: ‘There is insufficient direct scientific evidence to formulate training recommendations based on the limited research.’

The top part of this (and every pyramid) is infinite and forever evolving. This is why they are all open-ended and may never have a peak, because our understanding and exploration of the human body should never be ‘capped’ or concluded. This is especially true for endurance.

This is why research from the Nutrition Department at the University of California stated, ‘Nutrition during the 4-hour period before competition can significantly affect performance.’

You have to be consistent in performing the mechanics of the movement.

you will only develop crisp and efficient technique by increasing the distance or duration of your workouts.

‘Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up and knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up and knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or the gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.’ CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL, Born to Run

This is called ‘persistence hunting’. It involves chasing after your dinner until it collapses to the floor and onto your dinner plate. No weapons are needed.

The answer is foot placement. We humans all walk, jog, skip and run in different ways. These movements are called ‘human gaits and are the different ways in which we can move, either naturally or from specialised training. One key variable in running gait analysis is how our feet strike the floor.

But runners who land on the forefoot – shown in the second graph on page 261 – create relatively little impact force on the feet,

This is because the ankle flexes and absorbs the impact. You’re now using your ligaments, tendons, ankle and foot’s architecture like Mother Nature intended.

study conducted at Harvard University in 2012 found: ‘Competitive cross-country runners incur high injury rates, but runners who habitually heel strike have significantly higher rates of repetitive stress injury than those who mostly forefoot strike.’

Once they arrived on our shelves, they came complete with elevated and cushioned heels, which in turn encouraged heel strike running.

Once shoe arrived

Without the heel-based support and padding, running with a heel strike was just outright painful and we were unable to sustain it over long distances.

The answer is because running is a skill. This sounds odd, but it’s a movement pattern, so more efficiency means more speed and less energy spent.

Therefore, despite what many experts will claim, the idea of the perfect running form doesn’t really exist. But idea of the worst running form does.

Law of biological individuality

Here are some of the many errors in running technique crimes that I’ve committed over the years.

Check visuals

Bioenergetics is the study of how the body converts food into energy.

This is because there are three primary energy systems that produce ATP: the phosphocreatine system, the glycolytic system (anaerobic) and the oxidative system. Each of these systems can be characterised by the duration and/or intensity of the task you are performing.

Shorter duration but higher-intensity activity is powered by the phosphocreatine and glycolytic systems. This is what would happen if we spotted our dinner and were forced to sprint.

Longer duration but lower-intensity movements are powered by the oxidative system (including rest).

‘Glycogen (carbohydrate) storage capacity is approximately 15 g/kg body weight.’

To use a sporting example, this means a marathon runner who weighs 67 kg would only be able to store 1005 grams of carbs (at the most), meaning they would run out of muscle glycogen – and therefore fuel – by the 20-km mark.

Which is exactly why, as we saw in Chapter 6, research suggests the inclusion of fat in the diet (see page 152).

These circumstances are best described in the book Human Muscle Fatigue: Physiological Mechanisms.

Fuel for long term training

Researchers from the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford stated that the energy needed to sustain exercise for a long period of time comes from the oxidisation of two fuels – carbohydrates and fats.

Interestingly, they state that the latter is a more sustainable fuel source and provides the ‘largest energy reserve in the body’7 that can provide enough energy to last about five days. In contrast, muscle glycogen reserves are limited and...

‘Metabolic cost increases during downhill running at steep angles.’ JOURNAL OF BIOMECHANICS14

‘Running can exert a load of as much as three times your bodyweight on a single leg as it comes into contact with the ground. When running downhill this is amplified since you’re battling gravity. People don’t understand just how fatiguing a mechanism braking can be.’

Delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) is a common response to exercise involving significant eccentric loading.

To understand the concept of 80/20 polarised training you have to understand your anaerobic threshold. This is the point when you’re running at an intensity and speed that means your body cannot maintain its intake of oxygen.

You spend 20% of your time running fast and above your anaerobic threshold to train intensity.

While many runners vary the speeds of their fast running, it is important to maintain a slow recovery jogging speed, and the next sprint interval should start before a runner’s heart rate drops too far.

Anaerobic exercise relates to those shorter, quicker activities that don’t need as much oxygen, like a 100-metre sprint, which can be done without (heavy) breathing.