Elasticity has certainly been a hot topic in S&C circles of recent years. I do believe that the COVID lockdowns around the world created a significant social and cultural shift within physical cultures to embrace outdoor exercise and as such, I think there’s been a rise in the popularity of undertaking ‘athletic’ endeavours over purely strength or aesthetics based training. This has seen the rise of run clubs; people trying to sprint and jump for the first time in years and even within a weight room context, begin to explore concepts and methodologies that fit outside the paradigms of powerlifting and bodybuilding. Even in my relatively short time observing physical culture, as I’ve been training in commercial spaces at peak hour times for 12 years now; I’ve noticed a shift from the classic 3x10 Bodybuilding Forum type splits, to everyone in your local Anytime Fitness becoming a Powerlifter and even towards exercises reflecting the influence of Bosch and other philosophically coordinative driven training systems; physical cultures and trends continue to evolve. Training for aesthetics will never die in these commercial gym spaces - right now, I see the ‘optimisation era’ in full swing as I don’t see many people seated rowing over a third of the stack; always with a single arm and with straps on - but I am also seeing the gym becoming increasingly dynamic; parks with adults running and jumping and social sporting clubs being as strong as ever.
Physiology
With the shift to ‘training like an athlete’, discussions around the idea of elasticity are in full swing and I thought I’d write a quick article unpacking ‘elasticity’ as I understand it. Before getting into it, I’d like to preface that understanding this topic is still a work in progress according to literature. When discussing elasticity, we’re mostly looking at the ability to effectively utilise the stretch shortening cycle to rapidly produce high amounts of force in short time periods. How hard and fast are we able to stretch something in order to get some kind of ‘bounce’ effect as a byproduct? My overly simplistic explanation of this phenomena is that if an athlete is able to violently stretch a strong and elastic structure, such as a tendon or muscle, they’ll be able to utilise its elastic potential energy as the tendon or muscle restores itself to its passive length. In order to cause a stretch on the tendon, surrounding musculature must create enough force to stop the amortisation of the joint so that it is just the elastic tissues which are continuing to lengthen; thus creating elastic potential energy which an athlete may utilise to ‘bounce’ out of.
The golgi tendon organ; muscle spindles and joint receptors act as receptors communicating muscular stretch to the brain; however, from what I can see, discussions around ‘elasticity’ tend to be less about proprioception and more about how we are able to utilise the suspensory and elastic qualities found within muscles (elastic proteins, pennation angle or particular muscles, fascicle length, fascia, fibre typing, etc.) and non-contractile tissues (tendons, ligaments, perhaps even bones). I’m not well read enough to go deep into these topics and only understand them on the most superficial of levels (which is almost as useful to not knowing them at all); but it should be recognised that our scientific understanding of these structures is still developing and in the future, there will be explanation to further understand how some athletes are able to display incredible feats of athleticism in an elastic and dynamic fashion - what’s going on in Usain Bolt’s achilles; what’s going on in Vince Carter’s knees, how can Serena Williams serve a ball at such high speeds?
At the very least - in acknowledging that there are a multitude of physiological mechanisms influencing performance, training interventions should take into consideration what they’re doing to alter either positively or negatively changing these properties AND that the human body is a highly complicated system; therefore, no positive adaptation made in one variable in isolation is guaranteed to create a positive change towards something such as elasticity.
Coordination and task specificity
As highlighted above, there are physiological factors that influence the elastic potential of an athlete and this potential may be completely genetically determined. Factors such as fibre typing, tendon lengths, muscle protein composition, etc. may be able to give some people the ‘edge’ over others. Furthermore, even if research exists on the influence certain training interventions have on factors such tendon stiffness, which would help increase the elastic potential of an athlete, it’s not something that can be measured without cutting someone open and pulling on it. So, as far as I’m concerned, if we cannot either change our genetic potential; and we’re not able to measure the physiological adaptations made, neither are really the primary considerations I have for the improvement of elasticity in athletes from a pragmatic, training perspective.
My personal belief system is that elasticity, and therefore, stiffness, is primarily governed by coordination. Myself and Louis were having a chat a couple of weeks ago on this topic and were reminiscing about coaching a very talented athlete a few years ago when we first began coaching together. Despite not doing much training in our time together, the fastest we clocked him at training was running at 11.4m/s - he was rapid. This athlete had originally quit athletics due to injury and had stopped training all together for at least 4-5 years, including no sprinting, jumping or weights training. Therefore, any possible adaptations associated with the ability to be elastic would have diminished. Within 3 weeks of returning to training, he was able to hit >10.5m/s+ and display elastic abilities well before any tendon or muscle adaptations could have been made. Reflecting on this phenomena made me also think about a paper a read a few years ago on this topic by Douglas, et. al Reactive and eccentric strength contribute to stiffness regulation during maximum velocity sprinting in team sport athletes and highly trained sprinters (2019). One of the concluding sentiments of this paper was that “However, stiffness regulation appears to be a task-specific neuromuscular skill” - I love this quote because it’s just a confirmation of my experiences but it also underpins the importance of specificity in a training program.
(Athlete running a 1.76s 20m Fly)
I wrote on this topic because it was requested by a follower when I did a call out ‘what topics to write an article on’ - (“Developing elasticity for movement efficiency” was the answer). It’s a good, but broad topic to comment upon because my follow up question is the context in which you are trying to express elasticity? Sprinters at the highest level may have ground contacts of 0.085 seconds, whereas a person completing a two-footed dunk may have a ground contact time of 0.85 seconds - 10x the dunker being 10x the duration of the sprinter. Although dunkers are very elastic and incredible jumpers, if put in a sprinting context, at some stage they’ll hit a threshold in which they’re no longer able to effectively produce force in the time frames provided (let alone organise their body into a technical model that facilitates this potential). When we’re talking about elasticity, great consideration needs to be made to the demands of the task at hand and how much time is allotted as this will determine the elastic development of the athlete overall. Many would consider hurdle jumps a great elastic training option for athletic development; however, what transfer can be expected if the elasticity displayed in that context is 10x the duration of the demands of the sport?
My perspective is that first and foremost, you need to regularly and progressively the task at which you wish to be elastic within. As elasticity hinges on peaking high eccentric forces in small time frames, you should try to do the task with large amounts of intent. Surrounding practice of the task, you should minimise anything that could hinder proprioceptive capacity (heavy slow resistance training, poor nutrition or sleep, high general stress); excessive metabolic stress (e.g. aerobic or anaerobic fatigue) or psychological stress (decision making, strategic considerations for the task, etc.). In order for the body to be able to coordinate high amounts of force in small periods of time, you need to be neurologically ready to do so. Always prioritise the development of the specific task as the primary purpose of your training program and create windows of training in which athletes are ready to perform at the highest level in order to push the boundaries of how fast and powerful they’re able to be.
You can supplement the specific training with exercises which mimic the joint action or the time frames of which the sports are performed at. Plyometrics are often looked at as a good intervention here as we’re able to produce high amounts of force in short periods of time; and you’ll be able to observe similar joint angles at the ankle, knee and hip that you’ll find in sprinting and jumping activities. My progression model for plyometrics is to challenge athletes to produce force in smaller and smaller time periods which come closer to time periods experienced in sprinting (e.g. higher hurdles jumps to lower hurdle jumps over time). You can do this single and double leg and I’d advise to stay very simple with your exercise selection - hurdle jumps, hops, bounds - “You can be fancy or you can be intense, you cannot be both” (my favourite Boo Schexnayder quote).
(Basic hurdle hopping exercise)
Alongside plyometrics, recently I’ve seen great success in the use of ballistic strength exercises which operate within similar time frames to ground contacts experienced in sprinting. Exercises which have high eccentric velocities in small ranges of motion such as banded box squats or hang pulls can be performed in time frames that even surpass those of a ground contact - just last week, a 90kg Hang Pull of mine hit >5000W in 0.063 seconds; I had banded box squats reach peak power between 18ms - 40ms consistently for a set. Randy Huntington and Rolf Ohman made a cool index to determine the elasticity of a gym exercise - the EA Index; which is dividing the peak velocity by the time to peak velocity. More elastic exercises will see a faster turnover from eccentric to concentric and this could be a good way to organise a progression model as well .Although a hang pull doesn’t look anything like a sprint, the neurological demands of producing that amount of force in that time frame, I believe, help support the elasticity required to run in increasingly diminishing time frames as velocity increases. If you want to learn more about this kind of lifting, buy a consultation with Brandon Accardi or Chris Dale.
(Examples of ballistic lifts with high acceleration values)
Health
My final consideration on this topic to be written about is the necessity to be healthy. It’s hard to be elastic when pain inhibits timing. If you’re experiencing tendinopathy or excessive muscle tightness, it’s going to be hard to be elastic and bouncy. A useful tool to keep tendons, muscles and joints health is to strengthen them through conventional resistance training; however, I’d dedicate a small amount of time throughout the calendar year to do so and then continue to maintain these adaptations throughout the year in a ‘minimal effective dose’ type of way; or at least in a way which doesn’t leave you sore and slow. If you are experiencing pain, consider biomechanical factors as well - is something experiencing excessive stress due to the way you’re moving? Athletes should also learn how to use manual therapy techniques on themselves in order to relieve tightness.
I’m also a great believer in developing elastic capacity by maintaining a high volume of low stress elastic contacts and actions within a program year round. Exercises such as skipping (for height or length, for example); mini jump series (as popularised by ALTIS), tempo running and conventional running drills add thousands of ‘micro-stretches’ through elastic tissues throughout the year and at least in my experience, I’ve only ever had tendon or issues when my program becomes so polarised to be either extremely intensive or sedentary; as opposed to keeping a large dose of low-medium elastic exercises within the program.
If you’re experiencing tendon, muscle or joint pain; you can essentially ignore the first 1500 words of this article and focus on pain alleviation before looking to push the boundaries of what’s possible with your elastic development because at some stage, you’re just going to hit a wall and it’ll take months to unravel.
(Athletes completing a basic plyometric circuit prior to sprints training)
OK - that’s probably the threshold that you and I both have to both read and write anymore. A few parting thoughts and summary points are:
The expression of elasticity is task specific. If you’ve watched Usain Bolt dunk a basketball, it’s certainly not anything special.
Elasticity isn’t something mystical and magical - it’s not about aligning your chakras and praying to the fascial gods for you to somehow have bounce. There’s an eccentric, isometric and concentric element to elasticity - and ultimately, the ability to harness the stress induced in both the eccentric and isometric phases will determine the success of the concentric. Become comfortable at high velocity eccentric work as peaking eccentric forces happens at higher velocities (as opposed to the concentric phase which happens at slower). This reality determines your progression model - over time, make the movement faster and you’ll get bouncier.
As outlined in a previous paragraph, I believe that coordinative factors are the most influential developing elasticity. Coordination should be understood on three tiers - task specific (what is the task you’re trying to complete); intramuscular (how well a particular muscle can stretch and coordinate itself) and intermuscular (how well a unit of muscles can work together to facilitate elasticity). With this in mind, you should train your sport; perhaps spend some time on developing an elastic muscle/tendon unit in isolation and then also in an integrated approach which challenges elasticity across a team of muscles.
As I begin my Masters degree and get actual certification in the field of Sport and Exercise Science; and not to just rely on my experience and my Bachelors in Secondary Education and International Studies; I hope to evolve my understanding in this realm over the coming years as ultimately, the elastic development of an athlete is VITAL for the long term development of speed based athletes and this area needs further study.
As always, feel free to message me on @metamorphosistrackproject if you have any questions.
Cheers,
Jack
Comments