NewsBreak caught up with the visionary CEO of OsteoStrong, Kyle Zagrodzky, to uncover the cutting-edge techniques behind optimizing athletic performance. Prepare to revolutionize your training regime with these game-changing insights!
“The foundational goal of any athletic competition is victory,” emphasizes Kyle Zagrodzky, the driving force behind OsteoStrong. “As such, athletes from all disciplines share a common pursuit: optimizing athletic performance.”
Zagrodzky goes on to explain that athletes approach their training from three crucial angles: Performance, Recovery, and Injury Prevention. Let’s delve into each of these key areas and uncover the revolutionary methods that can take your athleticism to unparalleled heights.
Performance: Unleashing the Powerhouse Within
Performance can be summarized as power, speed, endurance, and agility. Different sporting competitions certainly have varying levels of needs across this spectrum. For instance, a triathlete will require more of a need for endurance than speed. Nonetheless, there are overlapping training techniques that support just about every type of athlete, but power is most notable.
According to Zagrodzky, traditional heavy resistance training to muscle failure has long been hailed as a superior method for achieving outstanding results. Surprisingly, overtraining is not necessary to achieve the desired outcomes.”By pushing muscles to complete failure in a single set, athletes can experience superior gains, reduced recovery time, and less inflammation”, he says.
Unfortunately, training with heavy weights has been a common source of injury among athletes. To combat this, a long-known training technique has been gaining momentum in recent years utilizing heavy latex resistant bands. Traditionalists understandably sometimes balk at this option in favor of free-weights, with the belief that lifting heavy free-weights summons greater primary and secondary muscle recruitment. While it has been shown that free-weights do indeed achieve this over resistant machines, it is not the case with heavy resistant bands.
“The primary benefits of resistant bands lie in their ability to provide varying levels of resistance throughout different stages of a contraction,” explains Zagrodzky. “This not only safeguards joints but also ensures a more complete muscle fatigue throughout the set.”
This is displayed when you take a standard bench press, for example. At the top of bottom of the contraction, while the bar is closest to the chest, the shoulders are in their most compromised position and have the least amount of leverage. Using free weights or machines does not allow the athlete to accommodate and protect this weaker range. Additionally, as the weight is lifted off the chest and pushed to the apex of the extension, leverage is increased. This is called the strongest range of motion, and it is here that the stronger range is rarely sufficiently fatigued because the starting weight selected must take into consideration what the weakest part of the range can handle.
Bands allow for greater resistance at the top range of a contraction, a lighter resistance in the weaker range, and a more complete fatiguing of the muscle throughout the set. This allows the athlete to save time by only having to complete one set while protecting their joints and getting a maximum benefit. There are a few options in the marketplace for quality resistant band systems, but X3Bar would be a recommended option given the ease of use and portability.
Strengthening the Skeleton: Unleash Your True Power Potential
In addition to heavy resistance training, it’s important to note that one of the key inhibitors to strength gains, also known as breaking through plateaus, is the strength of the skeletal system. However, as Zagrodzky emphasizes, “The central nervous system will never allow the muscles to exert more force than the bones can handle.”
Imagine that your muscles rare the horsepower of your body and your skeletal system is the chassis supporting it. Strengthening your bones becomes essential to unlock your true power potential.
Developing a powerful skeletal system is both simple and challenging simultaneously. It’s simple because it doesn’t cause fatigue and only requires a few minutes a week. However, it’s challenging because it demands an exceptionally high amount of force.
Research, including the groundbreaking 2012 Deere study, reveals that triggering osteogenesis, the development of new bone, necessitates experiencing a minimum impact force of 4.2 multiples of one’s body weight. Sprinting and weight training alone cannot generate such force safely, making high-impact activities the only reasonable alternative.
Zagrodzky states that Gymnasts are a great example of this, “they do not work out harder than other types of athletes, but pound-for-pound they are likely the strongest athletes in the world”.
The reason is that a gymnast will generate many multiples of their body when they strike the ground. The result is a repetitive signal to their central nervous system triggering an adaptive response signaling to strengthen their skeletal support structure. The impact makes their bones stronger, and the strength of their muscles are free to increase right along with it.
However, high impact forces are hard on the joints. In fact, the average gymnast will retire at the age of 19, and gymnasts experience a high rate of hip and knee replacement surgeries. Finding a way to emulate these high levels of force, without impact and reduced chance of injury has been the challenge.
Enter OsteoStrong – a great recommendation for a skeletal strengthening solution. Athletic performance gains are undeniable for just about any class of athlete that has used the sessions. According to Zagrodzky, “endurance athletes such ironman competitors, swimmers, golfers, and powerlifters have not only observed significant performance gains, but even surpassed their own plateaus after four or five sessions and continue go up from there”.
Based on the unprecedented performance outcomes seen in OsteoStrong athletes, there are likely to be two types of athletes in the future: Ones that do skeletal strength conditioning, and ones that lose.