Posted by Juerg (207.194.220.155) on January 17, 2004 at 18:47:58:
In Reply to: Intermuscular co-ordination... posted by danZ on January 17, 2004 at 17:54:46:
Hi Dan , challanging questions .
We try to keep the motoric pattern of a motion as long as possible on a level ( brain ) instead of reflex, as long we have an athlete , who may change in bodysize: for example length.
We think , that as soon you "loose " the movement from your brain to a reflex type of a motion , it may be much more difficult to change this , if it will show , that the technique may be wrong.
See the change in skiijumping from parallel ski position to V jump technique.
We had athletes in the national team , who jumped over years parallel. Once they had to change to V they were able to do this in training ,but always failled in competition ( Stress , old pattern was stronger and so on )
1 leg forward , 1 leg backwards on a free roller and in standing not sitting free handed with joggling. ( I am not kidding , Dylan Sebel was able to do this in Sardinia.
Value of this can always be discussed. As I am not coming from one specifc sport but moving arraound in different sport I strongly support the idea of an overall athletic training besides a highly specialiced training. ( Motivation , injury preventiaon , over training ,prevention,
new challange , fun , disappointment , concentration you name it . )
When do I stop , I do not know , I think it depends on the athlete and his overal coordination skills.
I think the preparation for a rise should involve not just the metabolic aspect of the specifc sport, it should include the specific intermuscular challange , the mental awaerness and so on. Getting ready for a bike race may be best done on independant pedals, even though you have an other pedalsyatem to race this MTB race.
The amount and eficience of the recruitment of the optimal muscle chain is much more on independant pedals. This may only make sense , when , as Frank mentioned you only use this pedals in training.
One of theproblem with any kind of new invention is the problem of tradition and Sponsor ship.
Big companies controlling , what's on the market , and if the " new " idea is not from one of this big guys , you may have a hard time to get the idea going, even if it is very clear , that it makes sense.
That's the way it is and that's the way it will be, so no point to worry about.
Last point.
Some mainly german research suggest , that 1 leg work out besides the coordination aspect may actually have a positive impact on the change in the level of cpillarisation and mitochondria density.
If this is of some interest , we may come up with some of the basic research ( Schoen et all ).