How is your understanding and application of angular mechanics? Most of my posts have been unpacking various topics from a linear mechanics perspective e.g. velocity, force, power, impulse, etc. But even though motion in many circumstances is linear, it is the product of rotation from the upper and lower limbs of the body. Given the principle of specificity it would make sense to rotationally overload our athletes for better performance gains.
A light-bulb moment for me on this topic came from research we did in Japan in 2018. We loaded athletes with 1-2% body mass with wearable resistance on their legs and got them to sprint over 50 metres of force plates. When asked how much harder it was compared to the unloaded sprints, they said 20-30%. However, when we looked at the force plate ground reaction forces, they hardly changed at all. How can this be perceived as 20-30% harder with only 1-2% change in the forces? Well the force plates were measuring linear forces, and the overload we were providing was rotational. We were overloading the entire swing phase but the force plate would only pick up that small instant of ground contact/footstrike.
How important do you think rotational overload is?
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