Creative Varying Resistance

July 13, 2009 on 8:18 am | In Strength Training | 3 Comments

Varying resistance is important for muscle growth, but it doesn’t always have to mean adding or subtracting more weight plates.

By changing the resistance of an exercise, your body will be forced to adapt (over time).  Ideally the resistance will get the body stronger and more efficient at performing the task. 

The tricky part is making sure that task has carryover to whatever real world application you want.  For example, performing squats and adding resistance will make you better at squatting, but will it make you better at football?  I think so. 

What about heavy barbell bench press for a sprinter?  Maybe for muscular balance, probably not one of the most important exercises. 

So think about what you want to get from each exercise before you dive right in on what the “experts” say is a great exercise.  Make sure it works for you!

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Alright, off of my soapbox and onto today’s video.  I have the athletes perform power wheel rolling because relative body strength is important for them to control their movements on the field or court.  It is also the foundation of starting the weight training here. 

A few of the athletes have become efficient at performing the power wheel movement, so I had to come up with a way to add some more resistance.  Instead of adding a weight vest, which may cause their hips to sag and form to be compromised initially, I have experimented with different surfaces.

Concrete was the easiest, followed by rubber mats (just simple friction).  I took it one step further to really make the movement harder and had the athletes perform the power wheel hand walking on grass…then uphill.  The grass adds significant resistance, as does the incline AND decline portion of the hill (upper body bracing on the way down to control the momentum).  So, up”hell” power wheeling was started.

Uphill – Up”hell” Power Wheeling

Just a short clip, but the whole movement took a few minutes and a couple of breaks.

- Joe Hashey, CSCS -
PS. Oh and….