The 949 Athletics Approach
We believe the most important aspect in training an athlete is to train the Nervous System. The nervous system is the “communicator” between the brain and the body. Muscles simply contract and relax. That's it. The nervous system is responsible for controlling everything else. The nervous system gathers and processes information from the outside world. It then directs, moment to moment, the musculoskeletal system – muscles, nerves, ligaments, and tendons- it coordinates each and every movement. The more the nervous system is systematically trained, the more accurate information it carries and the shorter the time it takes information to be processed. This type of training produces a faster reacting, well balanced, more powerful athlete.
The 4 Essential Elements of 949 Training
Instability
Instead of doing your exercise sitting in a chair or standing on the ground or on the floor in most programs, we have our athletes stand on a wobbling disc or slant board or sit on a big rubber ball (i.e. Physio Ball). Nerves then monitor what needs to be done by the muscles, then it sends rapid fire messages to your spinal cord and brain. In this case the message is “help I’m off balance.” From this point your nervous and musculoskeletal systems continue to dialogue, through a series of motor nerves, working back and forth until balance is found. The more challenging it is for your system to find balance, the more efficient the body becomes at finding it.
Multiple Planes
When you work out multiple planes, your body is required to create a greater range of motion, and many more muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints are called upon to complete these movements, improving the body’s efficiency. Instead of lifting a dumbbell or squatting in one linear direction one plane of the muscle, you move weights in circles, diagonals, and at varied angles, or a combination of them all, increasing the number of planes. This greater range of motion forces more of an individual muscle to work. Specifically, a greater number of fibers are activated, and the full length of each fiber is utilized creating more force.
Reversing
The way to create the element of reversing in a workout is to quickly and forcefully move parts of your body from one direction to another. We do this by using lighter weight so the energy is available to make a more forceful move in the opposite direction. The more energy gathered the more powerful change of direction occurs. The use of this energy is the key to improving overall efficiency and balance in the body.
Resistance
The key to our resistance training is not how much weight you use, but how the weight is used. Resistance is applied via use of light weights with a combination of the elements of instability, multiple planes and reversing. The athlete will utilize these weights to move in a series of multiple planes reversing direction while the body is kept off balance. This continues to challenge the nervous system and speeds up the time it takes for your brain, nervous system and musculoskeletal system to work together in unison. Thus increasing overall athleticism, which directly translates to increased performance on the court.
949 Training vs. Conventional Training
Muscles simply contract and relax. That’s it. The nervous system controls everything else—limb speed, power, agility, grace, body integration, timing, rhythm, balance and coordination. These elements define athleticism. Conventional weight training completely ignores the nervous system.
Gifted athletes excel in sports in spite of their conventional weight training regimens—not because of them. Conventional weight training depreciates athleticism because the rate of force production is too slow. The ability to lift or move a heavy weight slowly, is a different motor function than the ability to move at a high rate of speed—which sport demands. The two disciplines enlist completely different neurological components. Conventional weight training conditions the brain that more tension produces better sports performance. It teaches a person to pump out that extra rep with all their might. In fact, the opposite is true. The ability to relax and fire muscles at the highest rate of speed produces the greatest sports performance, which is all controlled by the athletes nervous system.
What dominates athleticism, and sport, is the speed of muscle contraction and the ability to store and use elastic energy. The speed of muscular contraction diminishes as the weight increases. Conventional resistance systems ignore this fact.
These methods help reduce the severity of sports injuries through the combination of muscular equilibrium with rapidly imposed loading to strengthen muscles, strengthen connective tissue, Ligaments and tendons.
We prove every day that it’s not the size of the muscle; it’s the ability to apply force at a faster rate that determines the better athlete.
Come and experience the difference….