better off waddling like a duck =) that trains ur lower calf muscles =P like dink said...frog jump very hard on kness...do jump rope and waddle around like a duck...waddle fast too =P
Most definitely agreed! I think you might want to stick to more traditional training over that type of thing...
I agree with the concensus here. This exercise looks like it can be very stressful to the knees for most ppl. I have seen it used for badminton training, especially by some Asian athletes. Vietnamese ppl, in particular, seem to have much more flexible knees than Europeans & Americans. Even elderly Vietnamese seem to be able to sit in a full squat for extended periods of time. (I can only do it for a couple of minutes). Perhaps for ppl that have that type of extreme flexibility of the legs & knees, frog jumps might be less stressful. However, I would still caution against doing them. In weight training, the half squat is considered one of the best exercises for the legs. However, a full quat is generally discouraged. If full squats are performed, it's normally just a few repetitions with little or no weight. Not sure if Olympic powerlifters do a full quat -- it they do, they would probably only do a single rep set. I'm sure that there are some plyometric exercises that can be employed to work the jumping muscles of the legs that are far less taxing on the knees. Does NE1 have suggestions on this type of plyo exercise?
oh yeah... a bit of information from what i learnt. most ppl do not do full squats because the ur knees would go past ur toes which is bad posture when lifting heavy stuff (like ur own weight) ex.1 ----- <--knee ------ <-- toes ok posture ex.2 -------- <--- knee ---- <-- toes bad posture, can cause injury to body
Frog jump and waddling around like a duck at fast speed wears out your ligament and cartiledge very quickly. They're bad for your knees. Just think of the amount of movement, stress and friction that is put on your knees when doing those two excercise. Half squats is good, so are lunges. And in my opinion, running on a treadmill with high inclination is best. It builds up your thighs and also calves at the same time with very little risk to injury. Personally I am already avoiding to do weights for my leg even half squats and lunges because it causes a sharp pain to occur when I am playing. So right now I am running on a treadmill at a fast jogging speed with enough inclination to burn up my thighs without causing stress on my knee. The result is better than half squats and lunges. Infact, I was thinking, since our beloved badminton actually causes so much stress on the knees already, excercises that causes stress on the knees through the addition of weights should actually be avoided already. But that's just my opinion though, as someone who have sustained a knee injury The other problem with half squats and lunges is that it makes your leg feel heavy, you actually need to do lots of sprinting and plyometrics excercise to counter the heavy feeling it causes and harness the raw power into explosive power. Running on a treadmill with high inclination and good speed won't cause such effect But you need to keep pushing yourself beyond your limits to achieve higher inclination and greater speed. Which is tougher than increasing the amount of weights you are lifting Positive side though, your fitness in terms of stamina increases as well on the overall Another way of building up the leg muscle is actually to use ankle weights. With your ankle weights put on, you lie down in the ground and then bring up one leg into a vertical position or more. Then you bring down that leg and as you do, you bring up the other leg into the same vertical position or more. Don't do this too fast or you will injure yourself. You can even do this for your hip abductors and hip adductors, just lie down on the ground sidewards. e.g You lie down on the ground with your left part of your body touching the ground, you bring up your right leg sidewards as much as you can repeatedly. Do the same for the left leg by lying on your right. ANOTHER way, is to sit on a half squat position against the wall for a long period of time and resisting the temptation to relent Measure how many minutes you can do this for, then do it for three sets with one minute break inbetween. However, you must commit to not relent until the time is up, or if you want to push your self, do beyond your first time count
Well, during that time you do it, you do a lot of damage to your knee. In such case, just pray that it doesn't develop into a serious injury One thing I can say for sure though, you won't feel the injury coming, and more often than not, you won't get the injury during the excercise itself, but rather while you are doing other stuff like footwork, or while lunging desperately in game.
actually...running causes stress in the knee joints too =P hahaha... courtesy of medical studies. running downhill causes even more stress than uphill... so if u run a treadmill incline...that's better than running a regular incline road which ends up in downhill on the other end of the road... =P
You are correct, our legs were not really designed for running downhill. Even walking downhill or down stairs is not the best action. Perhaps walking or running backward down a hill might be a little better -- just like we normally go down a ladder backwards rather than turning around. Jogging is probably worse than sprinting. With jogging, may ppl tend to incorporate a smaller stide with a lot of up & down motion. Running with a longer stride might be less jarring to the feet, ankles, knees and hips. I believe that even the act of walking can put forces of 3 to 4 times our own body weight on the joints of the legs. I imagine that jogging puts a lot more stres than that on the joints. Best to run on a soft track or a floor that has some give rather than on a hard pavement.
Well to be realistic yes ofcourse running puts stress on our joints its just that I was overemphasizing the lack of stress that I feel on my joints as compared to carrying weights. Plus, running on a treadmill with springs really feels soft even better than running on grass I'd say
Agreed. Note that some treadmills are better than others -- depends on how much "give" or "spring" that they have. I would advise taking long strides rather than short ones to minmize stress on the feet, lower back and the various joints of the legs. I've heard some ppl on treadmills, running or jogging, that make too much noise with their foot impact on the treadmill. This is an indication that they are putting way too much stress on the legs and back becuz of the way they run/jog.
Reason for injury I have seen problematic injuries from these frog jumps. If you are in your teens, you may actually have degenerative changes to the attachment of your patella tendon causing Osgood's. You could also get cartilage erosion due to patellofemoral maltrackking (usually we do not recommend flexion beyond 60 degrees). If you insist, make sure you just do half-squats or already have a solid foundation physically. Talk to your coach and let him have a discussion with your physiotherapist or sports doctor. We find that that's a good way to modify some of these training regimes. Good luck! http://sportsnmedicine.blogspot.com
Often people will focus their attention on full squat versus half squat, but the issue is a little more than simply that. Olympic powerlifters -> no such thing exists because Olympic lifting and powerlifting are separate sports, with separate lifts (e.g. c&j, snatch vs squat, bench, DL), different regulations (e.g. powerlifters will wear special elastic "lifting suits" to help increase poundage in competition) and different athletes. Regardless, in any squatting motion there is force generated by the hips/legs that is transferred into the ground. Two critical movements are hip extension and knee extension -> the muscles that perform this motion are very large and are capable of generating great force. One way to tell how active either of these motions are during a lift is to look at the angular motion at these joints during the lift. One common problem is that people will have poor hip extension ability. For example, people often spend much of their day sitting in a chair (a flexed hip position) which stretches out and weakens their hip extension strength. Furthermore, many of the exercise machines at commercial gyms tend to work knee extension (knee extensions, leg press) more than hip extension (deadlifts, glute-hams) because knee extensions movements are easier to "isolate" (another questionable training practice) whereas hip extension movements require more body awareness to direct loads onto the hips rather than the lower back (note that this awareness will help to prevent back injury, but I suppose gyms don't want to take the time to teach proper movement skills). Consider the consequence of excessive knee extension strength to hip extension strength. When your body is given a heavy load, the instinct is to move that load without too much regards to long term health (e.g. if a rock falls onto your back, get out of being crushed before worrying about long term knee problems). Now, your body is quite clever and will generate its force based on what is strongest. So, if your knee extension is stronger than your hip extensions, your knees will take on a bigger proportion of the load. If your hip extension is strong, your hips will take a big proportion of the load. Now, the common problem is that people's hips are underactive and so their knees are taking too much load. The result of this is less weight lifted and more injuries. Knowing this, let's consider a few different types of squats: Close stance squat, full range- this is the squat performed by Olympic lifters. Note that for these lifters the squat is the "recovery" portion of their lifts -> meaning that they'll squat down to wedge themselves between the weight and the floor after the explosive portion of the lift, and then stand up with the weight. So, it would be to their advantage to get as low to the ground as possible with this squat. Now let's consider the relative hip and knee movements in this squat. In the top part of the range of motion, knee extension tends to be dominant. In the bottom part of the range of motion, hip extension tends to be dominant. So, in a full range of motion squat, more torque will gradually be distributed towards the hips as you get lower. Wide stance squat, half range - this is the squat performed by powerlifters. Powerlifter squats start from the top: they then squat down to the point that their knees are in line with their hips, then go back up. Note that this depth is actually much deeper than what people will do in the gym when they perform half squats. Consider the angular motion occuring at the joints. With the wide stance, hip movement occurs much earlier in the movement. By the time the proper depth is reached, both the knees and hips are extremely flexed, so there isn't really that much more depth that can be achieved. So, the wide stance is a technical adaptation for squatting which gets the hips more involved in towards the start of the lifting -> i.e. sacrifice range of motion (which is fixed rather than opportunity for maximizing performance like in o-lifting) for greater force output within that range of motion. Close stance squat, half range - this is the typical "half squat" performed in gyms everywhere. Generally, it is done by people with overly dominant knee extension, and the reliance on knee extension in this lift reinforces that strength imbalance (which may lead to increased injury potential). As the lifter goes down in the top portion of the squat, the knees are dominant. As the lifter gets lower, more of the weight needs to be distributed to the hips. However, if hip function is poor, or if knee strength is too far ahead of hip strength, this redistribution of force doesn't occur properly and the knees get overloaded. Thus, the lifts ends without fully entering the hip dominant phase of the movement -> knee extension keeps getting stronger and stronger and the problem keeps getting worse. Conclusion: this type of squat kinda sucks, there are better options available.
Thanks for the clarification, sf. Altho' ppl oten use the term, "Olympic Powerlifting", it is technically incorrect as defined by the IOC and other groups. Some of the confusion arises becuz Olympic Lifting incorporates power in addition to flexibility & technique. Power, generally defined as "speed strength", involves movement of an explosive (rapid) nature. According to a wiki source: "While both disciplines demand high levels of force production, weightlifting actually focuses more directly on the rapid force produced by dynamic efforts, meaning that "powerlifting" is really something of a misnomer." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerlifting Acording to another wiki article: "The half squat descends to a depth that is between hams-parallel and quads-parallel." In this definition, this refers to having the back of the upper legs & the front (top) of the upper legs nearly parallel to the floor. "The jump squat, a plyometric exercise where the squatter jumps off of the floor at the top of the lift." Care should be taken not to perform this with excessive loads. Leg presses or inclined leg presses can also be performed plyometrically with the same caveat. In any of these cases, the legs should not lock out -- the leg muscles rather than the knees & ankles should absorb any shock due to the movement.
Good advice! Avoid frog jump and duck walk alltogather. They can cause serious damage to your legs. They are banned in many places and many trainers discourage them for good reasons.
A few notes. Yes, power is the product of speed and strength (force production), but some useful distinctions can be made for different types of power training. Training for speed-strength can be defined as trying to maximize the force production while at training at maximum speed. An example of doing jumps -> there's no way you can jump slowly, jumping is an inherently fast movement. So, the speed of the movement is fast, and maximization of force produced is secondary to maximization of speed. Strength-speed, on the other hand, has you maximize force ahead of maximizing speed. An example of this would be olympic lifting. The inertia of the heavy barbell simply restricts acceleration too much for it to be a speed movement. The force exerted on the barbell becomes the limiting factor, but speed is still useful as it gives the weight momentum to pass through the critical joint angles where force is minimized. Anyways, whether a movement is speed or strength dominant is dependent on the load relative to the maximum strength. For speed-strength training, loading should be 15-30% whereas for strength-speed training, loading should be 50-65% of the maximum (where the maximum is the heaviest load that can be lifted within 9 seconds). Consider the example of the squat and jump squat. Imagine a 150lbm individual who can squat 225 lbf (that's 2 plates per side). This person moves a significant portion of his bodyweight (let's say 85%) with each squat, so his total force output would be 225+0.85(150)=352.5lbf - 30% of this weight would be (0.30)(352.5)=105.75lbf - subtract the body weight being moved to get the bar weight 105.75-(0.85)(150)= -21.75 lbm?? What's going on here? Well, in order for this person to perform a jump squat that is within the heavy range for speed strength training, the weight would have to be -21.75 lbm, i.e. some kind of pulley setup perhaps? Practically, that would be kinda silly, and what it means is that this person needs to get stronger on the squat before moving on to jump squats. Otherwise, the jump squats are just too slow to allow for maximum speed to be generated. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, second thing here. What is meant by plyometric training? I think the term is a bit overused these days to describe any type of power training. Often, you'll find reactive strength exercises and rate-of-force development exercises grouped together. Reactive strength - this type of strength is dependent on having the muscle stretch (i.e. contract eccentrically). This does two thing - it activates the stretch reflex which potentiates a stronger concentric contraction, in addition to pre-tensing the muscles and tendons. So, in reactive strength the elastic tension within the muscle is a very significant factor. Some examples for reactive strength would be: drop jump after stepping off a box, the bounce at the bottom of the catch in an olympic lift, and running at top speed in sprinting. Rate-of-force development - this type of strength is dependent on muscular factors (e.g. concentric contraction only, or minimal eccentric preloading). Imagine doing a jump squat after waiting in the bottom position for a bit- the would be little elastic rebound from the descent (it would have long dissipated) and all the energy for the jump would be generated from the legs. Examples of this type of strength can be seen in: paused-jump squat and the start (acceleration phase) of a sprint.
i just got overwhelmed by stumblingfeet there.. har har... thx for the informative piece! good to know
