Is the Barbell Bench Press a Bad Exercise Choice?

"Any workout is better than no workout"

"Just go the gym and get started! You will figure out what to do."

"Lifting weights is healthy."

While these statements certainly contain great bits of truth, they do not provide the entire picture about the dangers of inappropriate resistance training. 

A recent paper (Kolber 2010) highlighted the real risk of resistance training on the shoulder.  

Consider:

One study analyzing pectoral ruptures found 29/112 of the ruptures involved the bench press; The bench press has been associated with distal clavicle osteolysis (DCO). DCO is characterized by a/c joint... read more

The Case for Stable Training for Athletes

One hot issue in strength and conditioning and fitness is unstable training for athletes.  Unstable training involves the use of balls, discs, half-balls etc. while resistance training. Unstable training has been utilized for both upper-body training (e.g., bench pressing while laying on a Swiss ball) and lower-body (e.g., dyna-disc squats).

It is generally accepted that unstable training can have rehabilitative benefits (particularly for ankles), but unstable training for athletic performance is a very controversial topic.  

Research has shown as the levels of instability increases, external load, force production and power levels tend to decrease. This has been shown... read more

Do Plyometrics Increase Vertical Jump?

Almost all competitive athletes use plyometric training to increase power, and "Plyos" are a staple of most Strength and Conditioning programs.

However, plyometric training programming details have been frequently quite murky.  Question  top coaches and few will give you the same answer about ideal repetition numbers, program duration, resistance amounts and sessions per week.  

Yet these considerations should be primary and fundamental considerations in any exercise program design.  Due to the great amount of plyo programming vagueness, I was real excited to read a 2009 meta-analysis on plyometrics and vertical jump.

 

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Can Fatigued Resistance Training Reduce Injury Rates?

While fatigue contributes to high rates of soccer hamstring injuries,  a 2009 British study theorized eccentric resistance training while fatigued could lessen hamstring injury risk in professional soccer players.

 

The basic question is: Does the specificity principle also apply to resistance-training timing to prevent injury?   

 

Two groups participated in the eight week study: one group resistance trained before practice or while “fresh”, and one group resistance trained after a fatiguing, game-simulating training session.  In other words, the second group resistance trained while fatigued which is when injury risk is highest.

 
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