Fidias — Health, sport, education.
Fidias is a fitness centre formed by a team of people passionate about education and movement. They have such innovative vision that it’s hard to explain. For this reason, I invite you to discover its methodology, masters, courses, blog and store... clicking on this link.
Last, but not least, thank them for the transfer of the image you’ll see in this post and the gift of this t-shirt —which I love— that you’ll be able to see, soon, on the Fosbury Flop Podcast.
Experienced London taxi drivers have a strong brain, much stronger than any beginner taxi driver or daily driver in the British capital. It’s not the same as having a big brain. They have a brain adapted to the challenges of their profession. Experience has given them the advantage of storing much larger spatial representations of the environment —among other things— which is crucial for navigation and their work success. All their learned skills, the neural networks they build… have resulted in this increase.
We aren’t looking for a big brain just for the sake of it. We seek to develop skills that help us adapt. As a consequence, their brain has been growing stronger. Have they developed the strength of their brain by training it in isolation with mobile applications, for example? Have they done it by taking driving school paper tests? I don’t think so. If anyone knows someone who does, please put me in touch with them.
Well, that’s what we do with sports. Precisely, that’s what we do with the belief that we need to train strength off the court or field and then apply it inside. A mechanistic belief that a complex system like our body functions like a machine. It is built piece by piece —muscle by muscle— and then it is ready to work. That we need a big muscle first. Then we can apply it to the sport in question. The truth is much more complex. We are not like a car on an assembly line; we are constantly evolving and adapting in multiple ways to the different scenarios along the way.
Julio Tous explains that when we talk about strength, what truly matters is the level of force applied in the action, the time it takes to reach the required level, and the time to maintain that determined level. It’s not the quantity of muscle that matters, but the quality: how well it is adapted to the competition it is facing. Forget about having big muscles just for the sake of it if they don’t provide any competitive advantage.
Just like with dinosaurs: Strong? Yes. Adapted? No. So… they became extinct.
The best ones are not necessarily the strongest or the fastest, but rather the ones best prepared to adapt to the environment they find themselves in. The GOATs of climbing and mountain racing—Adam Ondra and Kilian Jornet respectively—are the best example.
The former explains how in climbing it is important to adapt to the routes, first. It’s no use being a dinosaur: having big muscles but not being adapted to the wall. Focus on adapting to the wall in front of you, on climbing more efficiently and the strength will come on its own from the technique. Adán and Raúl, from Fidias, explain it well: develop the function, forget the structure. Having big muscles and not being adapted to the climbing route can make climbing impossible. It’s not about big muscles, it's about adapted muscles.
If this adaptation leads to an increase in its size, great. If you’re adapted and your muscles doesn’t grow... don't worry. Chasing big muscles just for the sake of it, without worrying about getting fitter is what happened to the dinosaurs.
Kilian Jornet doesn’t set foot in the gym. I’m not making this up, he says it himself: he works on strength by running downhill, skiing, climbing, going uphill, etc. He works on strength within the sports environment in which he competes, challenging himself with demanding tasks.
We can make the task at the gym or on the court with kettlebells or resistance bands resemble the requirements of the sport as much as possible... We can tailor the training to the specific manifestation of strength or physical capacity... We can focus heavily on a player’s strength and make it as similar as possible to the demands of the sport. But...
There are many other “forces” that have a greater impact on the player, such as the relationship with teammates and opponents, the need for precision, the perception-action cycle, the uncertainty and variability of the game, and even the competitive schedule. Strength also depends on all of those factors.
A striker who has stronger knee and hip flexion in the gym doesn’t necessarily run faster than their defensive rival if their relationship with teammates is not optimal or if they cannot adapt to overcome the defensive patterns of their opponent. Speed, just like strength, isn’t solely a muscular or physical property; it’s a complex one and influenced by the environment and cognitive and perceptual factors (as well as muscular factors).
Strength or speed is just another tool that can help us achieve a goal. Cristiano and Ballesteros have the same objective of reaching the ball first. The first player relies on big muscles and arrives late, while the second player uses his head, intelligence, and anticipation. The former may be a dinosaur and have strong muscles, but the latter player is adapted. Iniesta, Modric, Busquets, or Xavi, despite their height and physique, demonstrate that strength or big muscles aren’t essential. They are just another property, among many, that the system can utilize.
Having big muscles, if not adapted, doesn’t guarantee anything. Having stronger hip and knee extension won’t prevent injuries if there is an ultra-demanding competitive schedule that stresses the player at a macro-level.
Until about 3 or 4 years ago, when padel was a relatively unpopular sport beyond Argentina and Spain, professional padel players participated in around 15 tournaments per year. Currently, padel is the fastest-growing sport worldwide, and players now compete in around 32 tournaments per year, excluding national team events or promotional events. Add to that all the travel involved and the lack of enough hours for proper recovery.
The main culprit behind this increase aren’t the strength training methods or the physical coaches but the macroeconomic factors related to the worldwide padel growth. In the face of this growth, Nasser Al-Khelaifi saw a business opportunity to further enrich himself through one of his hobbies —racket sports— and decided to create a parallel tour that offered players different benefits.
At a macro-level, a battle between tours has emerged to monopolize padel, and it has even affected the micro-level: players have had to compete in twice as many tournaments as they did a few years ago. Injuries and absences have quickly emerged, and many players have pointed to the calendar as the main culprit.
The competitive calendar is a powerful force at the macro-level that is beyond the control of the player (micro-level). The competition schedule influences stress, recovery, mental fatigue...
If, in the face of an enormous competitive workload, we focus on training to further load the muscles to solve the injury epidemic, we will only overload the player and the already affected areas even more. By focusing on the player’s level, the calendar will continue to cause unprecedented stress at the macro-level.
We can wait and see if players don’t get injured and eventually adapt. We can continue with the same competitive load and only let the fittest survive. I don’t believe it’s the best approach. To prevent the injury epidemic, we can train differently or hire a better physical coach… but it will be much more effective to make changes to the calendar.
Change the belief about strength. It’s not something we need to train, that is the cause of performance... It is a property that emerges in response to the need to find the best solution in a task.
When I want to sprint for a long time, my muscles need energy and need to eliminate certain substrates like carbon dioxide. That’s why my lung ventilation increases. Breathing adapts according to the task I’m performing, and the increase in lung ventilation emerges without the need to consciously command it or having previously trained it in isolation.
The same applies to strength. Just like with breathing, every activity —whether it’s sports-related or essential for life— requires strength. The system self-organizes in response to the challenge of the activity being performed.
The muscle adapts to the context. Growth —in case there is— is the consequence. The speed and muscles of a gazelle increase when the cheetah becomes faster or becomes the slowest in the herd. The London taxi driver doesn’t aim to have a big brain to improve; growth is the result of being adapted to the city of London. Brain adaptation depends on the context of the taxi driver. Athletes become stronger because their previous level of strength no longer serves them, and they have to adapt to a new scenario.
If you train a basketball, football, or padel player using weightlifting methods, the muscle will adapt and grow in relation to the bodybuilding context for which you are preparing them.
Nothing against the gym, but let’s analyze the benefits and drawbacks of its decontextualized training, “just because that is how it has always been done”. Against the belief that off-court strength training is the cure-all. Building big muscles just for the sake of it shouldn’t be an indispensable condition of a physical coach. The main concern should be the performance improvement, short and long term. Weight training at the gym can make you feel good in the short term. In the long run might be stressing what is already overloaded.
Can we focus on a player’s strength? Yes. Is it effective? I don’t know. A competitive collective exercise under fatigue conditions involves strength training and encompasses interaction with teammates, opponents, the uncertainty of the game, etc.
A deep squat is strength... but what about everything else? A split squat at the speed of the sport is strength... but what about everything else? If you want to work on sport-specific strength, what’s the need to do it in isolation at the gym without the perception, variability, uncertainty... that characterize the game?
Paco sums it up better:
“Doing something that doesn’t happen in the game is ridiculous; for this reason, we cannot think that the football players improve their resistance by running on the beach. In any case they’ll improve their health… and health is good! If you’re in a gym doing weights, the same thing happens. You can’t say you’re training strength for football: it’s impossible to train strength for football in a gym! In a complex context as the game of football, we cannot improve by ignoring this complexity.”
—Paco Seirul·lo
It’s not about having big muscles. It’s about preparing our body to overcome competitive challenges. It’s not about training each determining ability in isolation, one by one.
Joan Cortés always said to me: "Will the player be better at the exercise or at the sport?" If to be a better taxi driver you want to do a lot of brain training exercises in the PC, you will be much better at these exercises, but not at driving the taxi. If you depend on the deep squat to be a better padel player... you will be a much better powerlifter.
It is about what Maradona taught us long time ago:
“This is useless!” Maradona exclaimed to me just after running as far as possible for 12 minutes —also called the Cooper test.
Diego had just achieved a markof 2550 meters and I told him that a player of his level had to run, at least, 3400. Then, he asked me how many meters I run in the same test and I said: “I’m around to 3200.”
—Fernando Signorini
However, what a player’s mind needs can destroy any argument from the coach, no matter how validated or evidence-based it may be. If a player asks me to do sprints or run on the treadmill to recover and be prepared... I will let her have her necessary placebo dose. That’s why Pep Guardiola laughed at his players when they asked to go for a run in the mountains after a preseason training session. But he didn’t refuse them; he gave them permission, exclaiming: “Long live the placebo!”
I believe that’s what Toni Caparrós taught me in one of his early lessons. I still remember the photo of Gianluca Basile on the computer while Toni was telling us about the severity of his knee injury relapse and, from the heart, he told us... the essence is the people.
Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop
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