Genetics and Sports

I think the most overused and one of the most dangerous terms in athletic vernacular is “gifted”.   Of course there are certain body types that are much more appropriate to certain sports and movements than others, however the term gifted is often overused and in many cases discourages individuals from the recognition that hard work and diligent training will overcome most gifts.  Genetic athletic gifts are like a glass.  It is true that some people are born with bigger glasses (DNA/Genome).  However, the size of the glass is only a measurement of potential; training is the act of filling a glass (Epigenetics /Phenome).  Athlete A is born with a glass that is 25% larger than athlete B.  The athlete with the smaller glass fills his to the top and the “gifted “athlete only fills his half way.  The non gifted athlete will prevail on the field.  My point is that we are all born with different DNA which we have no control over.  There is a whole body of research which has identified different athletic genes.   We all know individuals who are just natural at a given sport.   However it is the expression of the gene (epigenetic expression through training) that we have the ability to influence through smart training.  This is one area that we have a great ability to influence. 

The best way to understand this is by thinking about identical twins.  Identical twins have the exact same DNA or genome.  In many cases it is almost impossible to tell them apart.  However, if one of the twins pursued long distance running and the other twin was a power lifter the differences in their physiques would be very pronounced.  Why is this difference so pronounced if their genetics are identical?  The expression of the genes is seen in the phenome of the twins.    If both twins have identical genomes what causes the differences in the body types of the marathoner vs. the power lifter?  The different forms of training have expressed the identical genes differently in the physiques of the twins.   It seems obvious from this example, but how do you influence your own genes?

The word epigenetic means over the gene.  In other words the expression of the gene over the underlying DNA that you are born with is the epigenetic expression of the gene.  The study of epigenetics is one of the leading areas of genetic research today.   What the research is finding is that different stresses on your body (training would be one stress) will mark your genes to behave in a particular way.   Much of the research has revolved around mapping the markers that result in negative expressions of the genes that subsequently express themselves through diseases of the body.  Researchers are trying to determine how to remark your genes to block particular diseases.   The same principle of gene expression is also evidenced on the training side.   In fact the scientific community is finding that a lot of the training adaptation of an athlete is more a result of the epigenetic marker than the training itself. 

Now I come back to the “non- gifted” athlete and how the concept of DNA and Epigenetics plays into training.  By the way, I do not think there are any non-gifted athletes.  These are just athletes who have not found a sport that supports their gifts.   Many youth athletes do not discover their gifts because they never “fail” at a sport. 

Genetics are important for certain types of sports.  Height can be very important in the game of basketball.    However, I believe that epigenetics are the bigger determinant of performance in sport today.  The science is finally catching up and showing that through training an athlete can change the expression of the gene to produce a result that supports performance in a particular sport.  This concept is far reaching to curing disease.  It will also have huge impact on an athlete’s ability to perform through a better understanding of what specific stresses result in a particular gene expression that improves sports performance.  In the past this gene expression has usually happened by default.

A great strength coach has a better understanding of what types of stresses result in different physiological results.  Measuring the athlete’s performance data and understanding what it means coupled with an understanding of the physiology will speed the increases in performance. 

So the moral to the story is that there is hope for individuals who do not believe they have the gifts to perform at the highest level of a particular sport.  Of course there are limitations, but it is amazing what can be done with the proper training strategy.   With proper motivation, desire, and the most effective training an individual can produce the most effective genetic expression to match a particular sport!

Is there a secret way to train to accomplish this gene expression?  What are the strategies and tactics necessary to mark your genes and develop the desired result? 

I will begin to answer in subsequent entries.  In the meantime train smart, have fun, and you will prevail. 

TRUTH IN FITNESS

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE REQUIREMENTS OF YOUR SPORT OR FITNESS GOALS AND THE TRAINING REQUIRED TO GET YOU THERE?

    In the list of building the perfect athlete and attaining fitness goals I focus on strategy and tactics.  Strategy is the longer term road map or plan to get you from where you are now to where you would like to be as an athlete or individual.  This is the difference between training and exercise.  Exercise is random with little time spent on strategy.  Strategy and training includes the establishment of goals, the timing and measurement of the progress when and what type of exercise to perform, regeneration through nutrition and rest. 

What are your strengths and weakness as an athlete? 

Are there any external factors effecting your performance and how are they addressed. Strategy answers the why of a workout on any particular day.  It is the architectural training plan so that the outcome satisfies your goal as an athlete or individual. The tactics are many. 

What particular exercises? 

What is the volume and intensity of a particular movement methodology? 

Does the exercise enhance the ability to perform the particular movements required in the sport?

Does it support the goal for strength, power, and body weight?   

The answer to that question revolves around the idea of Specificity of Training.    At Sirens and Titans Fitness we believe that winning in sports is derived from the development of power (moving your body through space) in a fashion that suits a particular sport.  This is (power x an X Factor) The X factor is the amount of times or level of absolute power required to perform a task.  For example:   Swinging a baseball bat is a much different X factor than throwing a punch for a boxer.  The boxer has to produce a smaller amount of power numerous times in a fight than the hitter of a baseball.  The mechanical requirements and metabolic requirements are much different and the training must be adjusted to accommodate the different requirements of the different sports.

 This accommodation and differences in the training is defined as Specificity of Training.  This accommodation ties directly into the concept of correlation and training that I discussed in a previous post.  The focus of the training should be on exercises that modify the body’s complex neuromuscular systems to overcoming movements that apply directly to the particular sport. 

 This requires the analysis of a particular sports movement pattern.  Looking at baseball again, the training must evaluate the movement patterns of hitting, throwing, and running bases. 

What are the biomechanical adaptations necessary?

What type of movement pattern?

What is the type of muscle contractions necessary? 

What are the metabolic requirements ofbaseball? 

These requirements are just a small list with many more factors to be considered and addressed when training a baseball player. So you get the idea of specificity.  This is not to be confused with simulation.  Many strength and conditioning programs are developed to try to simulate the sport and just add a level of resistance to the movements.  This can be helpful in certain movements, however if done without foresight the training can actually confuse the neuromuscular patterns that have been developed and therefore result in a diminishment of sport performance especially of a very high level athlete.   Simulating the sport with resistance does not take into account all the physics of movement like center of gravity, inertia etc., so be thoughtful and understand the difference between simulation and specificity.

Think about the X factor of your sport and train in a way that addresses the specific needs and requirements of that particular sport.  Your tactics should be adjusted so that it addresses the specific requirements of the movements and metabolic requirements of your sport.

Train smart, have fun, and you will prevail.

TRUTH IN FITNESS!

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

Are you Training like a Lion? What is Overload/Adaptation?

 I am going to spend some time in the next few entries discussing some training principles that are necessary for anyone training today at any level of sport or fitness. I am going to start with the concept of overload /adaptation.

On the surface this principle is simple. An overload is a stress on the body over and above what is normal. If the body is stressed at this level on a regular basis it will adapt to that stress by altering the body to accommodate this new above normal stress level. Once the adaptation accommodates the new stress level there is a new normal level of performance. On the surface this seems like a very simple concept, however without the appropriate training infrastructure to support this concept there is great amount of time that is wasted. At Sirens and Titans we understand that the real product we provide to our clients is time. I know that sounds funny coming from strength and conditioning center. An athlete has a limited amount of training time in a career.

Let’s assume they start their sport at 12 years old and if they rise to the highest level of sport and become a professional they typically retire at 30-35 dependent on the sport. This is a best case basis. Most athletes have a much shorter career, but I just want to demonstrate the impact of poor training on an athletic career. Now let’s assume that an athlete has 12 weeks a year that is off season. This is the time where they can really focus on improving their fitness. By the way, this is usually much less than 12 weeks. That is 276 weeks over 17 years. This is the best case scenario excluding any downtime for any reason. Life has a tendency to get in the way and training time is regularly compromised. The purpose of strength and conditioning coach is to maximize the athletic performance during this time. If an athlete has subpar training for one of the 17 years there is a 4.34% loss of training time. In other words the athlete is 4.34% less fit in the 17th year of their career if all else is equal.

If you lose 2 off seasons the loss is 24 weeks and the loss goes up to over 8%. Of course this is a very general way of looking at the idea of time and is not exact but you get the idea. The impact in the first 8 years of an athlete’s career is even more damaging. In addition early in a career when an athlete is less mature and has just begun to realize their genetic potential the gains can be substantial and also contribute greatly to the mental game of the athlete. As fitness improves confidence grows. How does all of this relate to your overload/adaptation and training as an athlete? First it should be a wakeup call for the necessity of developing an overarching strategy for your training. In the 1960’s the eastern bloc countries would identify athletes with genetic potential and then create strategies that would cover 10 years in length. This was in the form of a structured periodization. I do not think it is necessary to look forward 10 years however the idea of understanding where you want to be and how you are going to get there is of great importance in being successful in sport today. Today most strength coaches are usually good at the tactics of training, but not so good at the strategy. In other words, if you go to the gym and workout with your trainer, you will have a good workout with all types of innovative functional training techniques but most of the time there is no strategy to answer the question as to why you did this workout.

Why are you doing heavy squats today?

Why are you doing deadlifts?

How many reps, rest, why?

How will today’s workout impact tomorrow and how did yesterday’s influence todays and next week?

How did this week’s workout impact 5 weeks from now?

Every workout is a link in chain of a champion. All of this brings me back to overload /adaptation. As stated earlier an overload must be over and above what is normal for the body to make an adaptation. In other words, if you always do deadlifts with 200 lbs. your body will never need to make the changes necessary to lift 400 lbs. This is where the wheels usually fall off in training at the elite level. The funny thing about training is that any change in the normal training routine will typically result in some type of adaptation. That means that any new training routine will show some progress. However, your body usually adapts quickly and then the changes stop once an adaptation is made. This is typically where time slips away in a career. Unless the training program has a structured strategy that is monitored and recorded precious time is lost. All of our coaches at Sirens and Titans are required to share with the client the daily workout strategy and also the longer term strategy which was developed when the client started training at our center. This allows the athlete to have a window into why we are training or resting in a particular fashion, and also forces us to constantly be articulating and reviewing our training strategies.

The strategy is dynamic and personalized and will change with increases in fitness. Weekly reviews of the strategy are made by the whole training staff, to insure relevancy and maximize progress. Some athletes recover at different rates of speed and this must be accounted for in the workouts. In fact as the athlete gets fitter the strategy has to be more precise and the tactics become much more important. Tactics are very important in getting overloads during a workout with an elite athlete. The work/rest ratio becomes very important in generating overloads in an athlete. I call it training like a lion. A lion hunts to survive. They rest all day long allowing their bodies to recover so that when they hunt they are at optimum speed and ability. If the lion was to halfheartedly chase down prey they would become tired and not catch their prey and eventually starve. The lion lays in wait and slowly stalks its prey, then with all of the energy available chases and pounces on the prey to insure the capture.

Athletes can learn something from this. If the athlete is regularly training at sub optimum overloads then no adaptation will take place. They will eventually fall into a no man’s land of training. This training is typified by workouts that are too hard for recovery but not hard enough for an overload. The work rest ratio must be vigilantly monitored to determine if the athlete is generating the optimum overloads. As an athlete gets fitter the rest needs to be greater and the intensity higher in order to obtain an overload. This is why most athletes stay at good and never become great. The overarching strategy and the monitoring of work rest is one of the most important aspects of quality training. This insures proper overloads and subsequent adaptations.

I will talk more about the tactics of training which are of great importance in obtaining overloads during a specific workout.

TRUTH IN FITNESS.

Jacques Devore, CSCS Sirens and Titans Fitness

Value your Time? Are you training all the time and seeing no improvement? You better have a Great strategy for your Fitness.

       In the past, I have  discussed overload and adaptation.  Overload/Adaptation is the idea that incremental overloads on a regular basis which allows the body to adapt to the increases in stress by initiating  physiological change in the body.  As these overloads become more frequent the body adapts and can  perform the specific task at greater and greater levels of output. 

When training a particular athlete or individual how is this idea of overload/adaptation implemented? 

      The training, both tactically and strategically, must be specific to the sport or the clients objective.  This statement is obvious but becomes much more complicated and tricky as the athlete/client becomes fitter.  Clients come to us all the time and say I train all the time and nothing changes. 

        A good example would be in training a 100 meter sprinter.  It makes sense anecdotally that having a really strong grip is not necessarily going to make you a great sprinter.  So spending large amounts of time on one’s grip would not be the best use of training time for a sprinter.  Now a wrestler would look at his grip as an important part of the sport and a weak grip would be something that would need to be addressed.  The correlation of grip to wrestling has a much higher relationship than the correlation of grip to sprinting. 

Why should you care about correlation in Strategy?

         The above example demonstrates the concept of correlation and how it relates to developing the strategy of training.   If one had the time and the inclination, correlation coefficients could be measured on different performance measures to rank the value of training exercises relative to a sport.  This is also important for the individual who just wants better health and body.  If your coach does not understand these relationships then the strategy is random and typically results in little change.   The correlation coefficient is a number between -1 and 1.  If there is no relationship between the predicted values and the actual values the correlation coefficient is 0 or lower (the predicted values are no better than random numbers this would be the example of grip strength to sprinting).  As the strength of the relationship between the predicted values and actual values increases so does the correlation coefficient.  A perfect fit gives a coefficient of 1.0.  Thus the higher the correlation coefficient of an exercise to the specific needs of the sport the greater the value of the exercise.   A negative correlation number would be actions or exercises that actually take away from the performance of a specific sport.  These correlations are really measured by the experience of the coach or through trial and error of an athlete.  

          Strength and conditioning coaches must think through this idea of correlation and determine what aspects of a training strategy have the most impact on the performance of the athlete in a sport.  If this is not being evaluated then precious training time is being wasted on areas that have little impact on the performance of the athlete.   At Sirens and Titans we look for “tipping point” fitness gains.  These tipping points are areas of fitness that with small gains can produce huge changes in the performance of the athlete during the sport.   In most cases the tipping points present themselves after evaluating an athlete for functional fitness and baselining performance.  Many tipping point fitness issues can be identified in this evaluation.  Another area that has this type of fitness leverage is found  in movements where power needs to be maintained for longer durations of time. This is the basis of the book I am currently working on for Rodale Press titled Maximum Overload for Cyclists.  There are a lot of athletes that have great vertical jumps; however they can only execute a handful of jumps at a high output level.  Training the athlete so they can maintain 90-100% of this output for a longer duration creates champions and changes the performance dramatically in competition.  

          In summary, think about the correlation of your training to your performance in sport or your personal fitness goals.   Constantly be evaluating where this concept can help your performance and speed your progress.  In addition, if you want faster results look for areas of weakness that would provide you with that “tipping point” performance progression.  These are both game changers. 

Truth in Fitness

Jacques DeVore, CSCS President Sirens and Titans Fitness Los Angeles.

Lift Heavy, Get Strong

Many athletes and people training confuse strength with power.   In fitness terms strength is your ability to generate a force.  For example, stand against a wall and push as hard as you can.  If there was a force plate measuring the amount of force being applied you could measure your strength.   Force combined with velocity translates into power.  If I take a bullet and try to push it into your leg it may hurt but it will most likely not penetrate your skin.  If I fire the bullet out of a gun and increase the velocity dramatically it becomes deadly.  Adding velocity to strength in a movement allows an athlete to perform at higher and higher levels.  This combined with balance, sport specific skills all come together to make a great athlete.  Of course there are other mental aspects of the game that come into play as well but one of the important ingredients is strength.

So what is the most effective way to increase strength?  HEAVY LIFTS, HEAVY LIFTS, HEAVY LIFTS.  It has become apparent to me that the emphasis on functional training has diminished the focus on the benefit of heavy lifts.   By the way, heavy closed chain exercises are very functional and incorporate multiple muscle groups in combination.  We do not typically perform open chain heavy lifts unless there is a particular requirement.  (NFL combine bench press test)  At Sirens & Titans, we look at the strength zone to be lifts of 8 repetitions or less.  When we feel comfortable that that athlete has excellent form, we like to go to 5 repetitions or less in a heavy lift.  Lifting heavy is important for almost any athlete.  Especially as athletes age and also for athletes that compete in power to weight sports.  It is also of great help to women, although the myth of getting big diminishes women lifting heavier.

Much of the culture of strength in the west is built on a foundation of body builders.   The goal of body building is to add size.  Most of the exercises for size are done at much higher repetitions in order to produce hypertrophy in the muscles.

With this in mind a typical exercise set up for strength would start with a light weight warm up of the exercise.  This is typically 10-12 repetitions.  This is the time to determine if all systems are good to go.  Are there any funny feelings or unusual stresses as a result of the exercise?  In many cases a second “warm up “set is called for and lowers the risk of injury.  If everything feels good we have the athlete jump to an 8 rep set.  The weight should be heavy enough that rep number 8 is difficult to complete.  We then go to a 5 rep set where the weight is increased and the 5th repetition is difficult to complete.   Difficult to complete means what it says.  It should be very hard to complete that last repetition.  When we are early in the maturity of a lifter we will usually stick with a 5 rep set and go no heavier until we feel comfortable with form and fatigue.  We also go back to this 5 rep strength set when we are doing higher volume strength work.  If the athlete has perfect form we will go to a 3 rep set and sometimes a 1-2 rep max lifts. 

These lifts are of great importance.  There is a great neuromuscular response to this type of lifting and strength gains come quickly.  The other nice addition is that these lifts do not take that much time, and can be completed in a relatively short amount of time.

So if you want to get strong, lift heavy with great form.  There is no substitute. 

Truth in Fitness.

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

President Sirens & Titans Fitness