Full article, with photos and video:
www.nytimes.com/.../29torres-t.html
A Swimmer of a Certain Age
By ELIZABETH WEIL
Published: June 29, 2008
NEAR THE WARM-UP POOL AT THE Missouri Grand Prix swim meet, in Columbia, a crop of Olympic hopefuls lolled around in practice suits and towels on a Saturday morning in February. Fully clothed among them stood some relics of Olympics past: Scott Goldblatt, who won a gold medal in the 2004 Games, wore an aqua sport coat and a striped tie and was doing on-air commentary for Swimnetwork.com; Mel Stewart, who won two golds and a bronze in 1992, wore the same goofy get-up, working as Goldblatt’s sidekick. Meanwhile, Dara Torres, who won the first of her nine Olympic medals in 1984, a year before Michael Phelps was born, stripped off her baggy T-shirt and sweat pants, revealing a breathtaking body in a magenta Speedo. She pulled on a cap marked with her initials and prepared to swim. Torres is now 41 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, Tessa Grace. She broke her first of three world records in 1982, at 14, and she has retired from swimming and come back three times, her latest effort built on an obsessive attention to her aging body....
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"Over the past year and a half, O’Brien, who is also the strength coach of the Florida Panthers hockey team, has switched Torres’s focus away from heavy, static weightlifting and geared her training toward balanced, dynamic exercises that stimulate her central nervous system. “The idea is not to isolate muscle groups but to get muscles contracting together in the right sequences,” O’Brien explains. Weight training, he notes, grew out of bodybuilding, and that low-rep high-weight tradition is ill suited for a sprinter since a body comprised of big muscles that have been trained to produce force only individually wastes considerable energy trying to move."
Hmmm .... so heavy lifting is ill suited for sprinters?!
Sometimes when I read about training, I play the "CNS game." What I do is I replace every instance of the phrase "central nervous system" or "CNS" with "brain." This is an excellent way to find out if somebody has no idea what they are talking about, since it's very trendy now to talk about the CNS without understanding its role in athletic performance.
Over the past year and a half, O’Brien, who is also the strength coach of the Florida Panthers hockey team, has switched Torres’s focus away from heavy, static weightlifting and geared her training toward balanced, dynamic exercises that stimulate her brain. “The idea is not to isolate muscle groups but to get muscles contracting together in the right sequences,” O’Brien explains. Weight training, he notes, grew out of bodybuilding, and that low-rep high-weight tradition is ill suited for a sprinter since a body comprised of big muscles that have been trained to produce force only individually wastes considerable energy trying to move.
Muscles don't get trained to do anything except contract. The nervous system coordinates these contractions. If you build big muscles with bodybuilding methods, it's not as if the brain can't use them for other purposes. The muscles don't produce force "only individually," they produce force however the nervous system decides they should produce force, and that includes swimming.
"Over the past year and a half, O’Brien, who is also the strength coach of the Florida Panthers hockey team, has switched Torres’s focus away from heavy, static weightlifting and geared her training toward balanced, dynamic exercises that stimulate her central nervous system. “The idea is not to isolate muscle groups but to get muscles contracting together in the right sequences,” O’Brien explains. Weight training, he notes, grew out of bodybuilding, and that low-rep high-weight tradition is ill suited for a sprinter since a body comprised of big muscles that have been trained to produce force only individually wastes considerable energy trying to move."
Hmmm .... so heavy lifting is ill suited for sprinters?!
Sometimes when I read about training, I play the "CNS game." What I do is I replace every instance of the phrase "central nervous system" or "CNS" with "brain." This is an excellent way to find out if somebody has no idea what they are talking about, since it's very trendy now to talk about the CNS without understanding its role in athletic performance.
Over the past year and a half, O’Brien, who is also the strength coach of the Florida Panthers hockey team, has switched Torres’s focus away from heavy, static weightlifting and geared her training toward balanced, dynamic exercises that stimulate her brain. “The idea is not to isolate muscle groups but to get muscles contracting together in the right sequences,” O’Brien explains. Weight training, he notes, grew out of bodybuilding, and that low-rep high-weight tradition is ill suited for a sprinter since a body comprised of big muscles that have been trained to produce force only individually wastes considerable energy trying to move.
Muscles don't get trained to do anything except contract. The nervous system coordinates these contractions. If you build big muscles with bodybuilding methods, it's not as if the brain can't use them for other purposes. The muscles don't produce force "only individually," they produce force however the nervous system decides they should produce force, and that includes swimming.
