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Flywheel training for explosiveness and athletic performance


Scrolling through your Instagram and Tiktok reels you’ll find tonnes of knowledgeable and experienced trainers employ training techniques to improve the fitness and athletic abilities of their athletic clients (if your interests align with this algorithm)


These techniques involve explosive-strength improvement such as plyometrics, ballistic exercises, banded-unilateral work (e.g. power snatch, banded jumps). An alternative to these methods is found in flywheel training.


If an athlete wants to improve their ‘explosiveness’ i.e., a powerful punch, a faster pitch, a powerful kick, a quicker turn its no doubt that they need to do a few things:


-         Practice the actual movement in repetition

-         Optimise physiology (muscle flexibility and strength and well-developed, efficient, task-specific motor               patterns for muscle activation).

-         Optimise the anatomy in all segments (relative upper and lower body strength)

-         Perform exercises which generate forces in a sequential manner that results in the desired athletic                     function


In order to achieve optimisation in all 4 of these points, one needs to evaluate/screen their physical and possibly physiological capabilities and complete an exercise routine to improve the lagging areas. This is where flywheel training can be introduced to enhance strength and explosive factors of athletic function.


Flywheel devices such as the Kbox Exxentric provide a gravity-independent stimulus that improves concentric force and velocity by enhancing the storage and utilization of elastic energy. It does this in a way that traditional plyometric and weight training fails to do:

1)     Applying eccentric overload safely and effectively

2)    Applying fast eccentrics forcibly


Applying eccentric overload safely and effectively


Every repetition on a flywheel device is a MAX-REP if you wish it to be, therefore an equal amount of energy on the eccentric will be given out by the device for the user to absorb. Therefore, to apply eccentric overload at a specific joint angle, you can slow down earlier, or perform a 2:1 movement.

Here are the two different examples below: a KBOX Partial Squat, a KBOX Deadlift to Bicep Curl.

So, a trainer would apply eccentric overload for a footballer at lower joint angles to improve sprinting during a squat.

 

Applying fast eccentrics forcibly


Using a lighter flywheel (lower inertia) you can accelerate the flywheel faster, therefore work different muscle fibres responsible for fast actions. The device is GRAVITY INDEPENDENT, so the flywheel will pull you down almost forcibly, therefore emphasising the eccentric portion, followed by a powerful concentric cooks for optimal explosive training. Below are a few videos showing this


Study result


A study by Fiorilli et al. (2020) discovered flywheel training significantly improved performance in change of direction tests, agility tests, and shooting tests in football players compared to plyometric training. The improvements were comparable from both training protocols, but flywheel was just slightly better. For an athlete, ‘slightly better’ can be the difference between winning and losing.

Overall Flywheel training provides a safer, more effective and simpler way to improve athletic performance.


References

 

Fiorilli, G., Mariano, I., Iuliano, E., Giombini, A., Ciccarelli, A., Buonsenso, A., Calcagno, G. and di Cagno, A., 2020. Isoinertial eccentric-overload training in young soccer players: Effects on strength, sprint, change of direction, agility and soccer shooting precision. Journal of sports science & medicine, 19(1), p.213.

 

Martinez-Aranda, L.M. and Fernandez-Gonzalo, R., 2017. Effects of inertial setting on power, force, work, and eccentric overload during flywheel resistance exercise in women and men. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 31(6), pp.1653-1661.

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