There is so much misunderstanding about the force-velocity relationship of muscle. This thread is an attempt to help.

TLDR: Muscle fibres impose a real constraint on movement, but the body has many ways to manage that constraint. At the fibre level, the force velocity relationship is genuine physiology. When fibres shorten very quickly, the force they can produce is lower. This is due to the mechanics of muscle function.

So yes, there is a real constraint at the contractile level. We cannot ignore that.

Training works because the body is built to change. That’s the core idea. And it’s easy to forget when we get caught up in plans, numbers, and systems. You don’t need to force adaptation. You need to give the body a clear reason to change, and then enough space for that change to happen.

Fatigue holds a strange status in training.
We fear it, chase it, and often treat it as proof of progress. The collapsed athlete, the quiet room, the coach nodding. Exhaustion became the ritual end to effort. But fatigue is not the goal. It only tells us that something was done.

Myths of S&C: Part 5

It takes too long to learn how to Olympic weightlift. This one will probably make some people unhappy 😬

Myths of S&C: Part 4

Power cleans are not the same as jump squats Firstly, I want to emphasise that, in this post, I am not arguing that your training programme must include Olympic lifts.

Every training decision is about weighing up the risk/reward ratio and choosing the most optimal means to achieve your training goal.

Myths of S&C: Part 3

Force-velocity profiling

This one is all smoke and mirrors and for this reason I hate it! Force-velocity (Fv) profiling of jumping is based on measuring how an athlete's jump height changes with the addition of external load.

This data is of interest, and can be a useful diagnostic tool.

I would have no beef with the method if it was presented in this way.

Myths of S&C: Part 2

Misunderstanding the force-velocity relationship.

Although almost all S&C coaches know Newton's second law (F=ma), our intention tends to be more Aristotelian. What does this mean? Aristotle said there was a relationship between force and velocity (sound familiar?). The harder you push something the faster it goes.

Newton said no. The relationship is between force and acceleration - the harder you push something the more it accelerates

Myths of S&C Part 1:

The Force-Velocity Curve of Exercises

Curves like this are taken as gospel, but are complete BS. I was pretty disappointed with myself when I realised that I had been accepting these types of curves uncritically. Its pretty straightforward to see that this type of classification doesn't make sense.

I have some grave concerns about some of the underlying messages in this paper (thread).

For me, it is a good example of an argument that on the surface seems reasonable, but when you dig a bit deeper is badly flawed.

bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/… First of all, I should state that I do have some sympathy for the problem highlighted by the authors. Yes, it is worrying when there are mistakes in published literature. However, the cure implicit to this article is worse than the problem.

I’ve seen quite a few “how to be a good coach” lists recently. They all seem a bit complicated and specific to me, so I thought I would put together my own. How to be a better coach:
1. Coach
2. Think about coaching
3. Gather lots of information from a wide range of sources.

#OnPrecisionInTheUseOfMechanicalTerms

There is a lot of overlap between everyday language and technical mechanical terminology. This can lead to a lot of confusion when talking about movement. It is very common for coaches to use language incorrectly when talking about mechanics. For instance, I talked about the misuse of the term "power" in a separate thread.

#OnMagnitudeBasedInference

I don’t know enough about statistics to decide if the approach is appropriate or not...

And neither do you. But that is OK.

It's always a huge achievement when a student publishes their MSc dissertation in a peer reviewed research journal. This is a celebration of the @StMarys_SandC students who have published their research in the last 2 years. 😃👏👨‍🎓🏋️‍♀️ @YourStMarys @SMUDocCollege Paul Wood

Lighter and heavier initial loads yield similar gains in strength when employing a progressive wave loading scheme

termedia.pl/Lighter-and-he…

@Jonnie_Mechanic

#TheForceVelocityMyth

This will be another long one.

The force-velocity curve is one of the most badly understood concepts in S&C. Firstly, in classical mechanics there is no universal relationship between instantaneous force and instantaneous velocity. Many S&C coaches assume there is.

#AnotherDynamicSystemsTheoryRant

A big problem with justifying training by appealing to DST is that no one really understands it properly (including, I would suggest, most of its proponents). However, because proponents of DST seem so confident in their delivery, they can appear to have some advanced knowledge of training (this is why they like it).

#BadWeightliftingCoaching Part 2:

I'm always surprised by how many (experienced) coaches think that the bar is supposed to bang against the thigh/hips during the pull. Do they really believe it is possible to "knee" the bar upwards? Not to mention that this seems like a pretty painful strategy.

What is the theory in Dynamic Systems Theory? (thread/rant)

#WhyDoPeopleMakeEverythingSoComplicated Dynamics is part of Classical (Newtonian) Mechanics.

Biomechanics is the application of classical mechanics to biological systems.

#BadWeightliftingCoaching (thread)

One of @stevemagness's "Rules of Everything" is "We overemphasise the importance of what we can measure and what we already know".

Similarly, in skills coaching we overemphasise the importance of what we can see. In Olympic weightlifting, one of the easiest positions to see is the so called “triple extension” that occurs at the end of the pull.

This leads many coaches to spend a great deal of time working on this position.

#SquattingIsABalanceSkill2018: The Twitter Remix

Warning: this will be a long thread.

To be effective in your coaching you need to know why errors happen.

In squatting, most errors are due to the fact that athletes are afraid they are going to fall over. When we squat, we need to keep the projection of our centre of mass (the arrow in the picture), within our base of support (the pink area in the picture). If the arrow moves outside of our base of support we will fall over.

#ForceVectorTheory. A force is, by definition, a vector. The name of the theory is thus a tautology and should really just be “Force Theory”. I thus propose the new name #TheoryOfTheMagicalHorizontalForceMuscle which more accurately captures the fundamental idea behind the theory Biomechanics 101 - understand the distinction between global (relative to the world) and local (relative to the athlete) frames of reference. When people refer to “horizontal” forces they generally mean in the global frame #TheoryOfTheMagicalHorizontalForceMuscle