Today’s episode features sport scientist and biomechanist Dr. Anthony Blazevich. Dr. Blazevich is one of the field leading researchers and observers of trends in biomechanics, muscle and tendon physiology, nervous signaling, and other important facets of athletic performance.
Across the span of time I was a sport science student looking up research papers for class, to a college lecturer in strength and conditioning, to running this podcast, Dr. Blazevich’s work has popped up regularly, and is always top notch. As is always the trend on this show, I seek out those practitioners who know not only the research, but have spent time in the trenches as either an athlete or a coach, and see the athletic equation holistically.
In talking to Dr. Blazevich today, I can’t tell you there are many people out there who know highly debated topics of sport performance more holistically than him. For our talk, I (as usual) ask Dr. Blazevich quite a few questions that the sports performance and sport science industry tends to be a bit polarized on, such as static stretching, and potentiation in warming up for a competition. We’ll also go in depth on loaded stretching protocols and benefits, as well as muscle fascicle length concepts and ideas on eccentric training.
This was a tremendous episode with plenty of punch not only in the research and science side of things, but also the realm of practical applications. If you are interested in the mechanisms that are truly happening in the course of warmups, stretching and various training means in a manner that can steer us towards better coaching regimes, you’ll love this episode. This episode may also set the record for the most show notes, so be sure to check those out below, there are a ton of gems.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- Dr. Blazevich’s background as an athlete, coach and sport scientist
- Static stretching in the role of warmup protocols
- Loaded stretching and PNF stretching ideas and applications
- Static stretching in application to recovery from training
- Ideas on potentiation, physiology and muscle temperature
- Muscle fascicle length, how it can be improved and eccentric training
- Muscle-tendon compliance and its impact on performance
- Facets of eccentric training and various ways it impacts athletes
Dr. Anthony Blazevich Quotes
“Maybe there is a benefit of (static stretching) to injury risk (in running sports)”
“There is no doubt that prolonged static stretching of a muscle can reduce the firing ability of the muscle”
“Static stretching for 4-5 minutes turned off inward currents to the muscles… for 5-15 minutes”
“Static stretching increases the amount of force we can produce at long muscle lengths”
“If athletes were allowed to do any stretching at all, either static or dynamics, they felt more prepared from their sport (if athletes feel better doing it and like doing it, then they feel better prepared)”
“There could be a huge number of other changes that occur in static stretching (aside from muscle length… since short duration static stretching doesn’t increase muscle length)”
“Static stretching has significant effects on our nervous and adrenal systems”
“When we activate a muscle and put it into a stretch, then we get better range of movement improvements than we see in static stretching”
“What we do know as far as stiffness is concerned is that when we activate the muscle and then force it into a stretch over period of weeks, we get massive increases in range of motion, but they seem to occur with an increase in tendon stiffness”
“Activating the muscle off stretch was as effective as activating it on stretch. When you activate the muscle into static stretching in some way, it’s more effective than static stretching alone. There’s something about muscle contractions that works”
“There is very little research, looking at post-exercise stretching, on recovery rates”
“By about 2-3 minutes, you are looking at exceedingly low levels of myosin light chain phosphorylation… myosin light chain phosphorylation cannot show the PAP seen in humans”
“50% of the increase in temperature in the muscle comes from muscle blood flow”
“For every 1 degree increase in muscle temperature, you can get a 5-6% improvement in muscle power output”
“If you do 300 reps of a thumb movement, it takes 20-25 minutes for that motor pattern to (get out of the system)”
“It does appear that maybe training in the morning, say at 9AM could have a benefit to what happens at say 3PM”
“We know that muscle water increase can increase muscle force production”
“Downhill running can increase the length of sarcomeres in rats, while uphill running does the opposite”
“You can argue that fascicle length is the most important functional unit of muscle… and I’d agree with you”
“Pretty much any time you take someone who hasn’t done much training and give them a high intensity training form, fascicles seem to get longer”
“We never fully activate our muscles, because we have got such control issues”
“There are things going on with eccentric training I think we’re only scratching the surface of!”
“What we haven’t studied if eccentric training now can help rate of force development later”
Show Notes
- BERGH and B. EKBLOM “Influence of muscle temperature on maximal muscle strength and power output in human skeletal muscles”. Acta Physiol Scand 1979, 107: 33-37
Classen, Joseph, et al. “Rapid Plasticity of Human Cortical Movement Representation Induced by Practice.” Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 79, no. 2, 1998, pp. 1117–1123.
Nuzzo, James L., et al. “Acute Strength Training Increases Responses to Stimulation of Corticospinal Axons.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, vol. 48, no. 1, 2016, pp. 139–150.
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