Why Powerlifting Is Important for Sports Person

Article by Praveen

Why Powerlifting Is Important for Sports Person – Sports – Extreme Sports

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Powerlifting exercises are extremely useful for helping rugby players, or athletes from any contact sport to increase their strength, size, speed and power.

There was a time when Olympic lifting was considered the top method for enhancing “power” (mass x acceleration) but with the use of accommodating resistance, popular in powerlifting circles, lifters, and players are now able to use powerlifting movements to develop not only absolute strength, but explosiveness and true power.

Due to the dynamic nature of rugby, it’s important to build a good overall foundation of strength. Powerlifting places a huge emphasis on strengthening every area of the body. Any weakness is obvious as it will show up in the relevant powerlift – squat, bench press, or deadlift.

Rugby players will become more durable, muscular and powerful by improving the strength in the 3 powerlifts. Using accommodating resistance – bands and/or chains – with lighter loads, fewer reps across multiple sets, they can prime their newly developed muscle and strength to produce force quickly, thus increasing power.

Bands provide a faster stretch of the muscle fibers during the eccentric (lowering) portion of the lift, which produces a faster concentric action in return. The body’s power output is enhanced by this simple training method, more so then if using free weights only. Without bands, the body will decelerate the bar towards the end of the lift to prevent the bar from flying away, also the more advantageous leverage closer to lock out reduces the force needed to move the weight.

Bands get increasingly harder in the stronger positions (near lockout). This forces the body to generate more and more maximal tension throughout the entire lift, producing a stronger, more complete action. The benefit of this can be seen at contact in scrums, tackles, fending, jumping, running, clearing out at the ruck etc.

Chains on the other hand lessen weight on the weakest portion of a lift, with the least leverage by piling up on the floor as the weight is lowered eccentrically, while increasing the load on the strongest part of the lift as they come up off the floor. This allows every part of the strength curve to be trained, rather then the load being dictated by the weakest part of a lift. Like the bands they teach the body to “follow through” the lift completely as the weight increases towards the end of each lift.

These are just two tools common in powerlifting that can help rugby players immensely. Another area that has great benefits is the focus that powerlifting places on the posterior chain. To absorb and deliver force, one needs a strong back. Simple exercises like squatting and deadlifting build the back along with more specialized exercises like the reverse hyper, and glute ham raise. Both these machines were developed by Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell in the USA. The number of athletes from sports such as rugby and NFL that have achieved excellent results with these tools goes along way to proving their value (and that of powerlifting knowledge) for contact sport athletes.

Powerlifting, like rugby requires a full-body approach. By following a basic training template, with the right guidance, rugby players can benefit enormously. Once shown proper technique the core lifts are simple to perform, progress and vary. While other forms of training such as strongman or Olympic lifting are also great for training rugby players, powerlifting creates a good foundation of various strength qualities – absolute, starting strength, strength speed – among others. These are whats needed to help build complete players, who are durable enough to play, perform well and enjoy their rugby for a long time.

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Related links : Guidance For Powerlifting

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Praveen

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