Upper body strength: make time for unstable training

As has been stated in numerous SPB articles over the past decade or so, the benefits of strength training cannot be overestimated. Most of you reading this will already know that adding strength training to a training program can dramatically improve levels of muscular power and strength, which provides a clear advantage for athletes whose sports require these qualities – for example, sprinters field sports athletes, and athletes whose sports requiring good levels of acceleration and jumping ability⁽¹⁾.

However, fewer sportsmen and women are aware that it’s not just strength and power athletes that can benefit from strength training; studies on a range of endurance athletes including runners and cyclists have clearly demonstrated that the use of lower-body, heavy-weight strength training can improve muscle economy⁽²⁾. This basically means that the leg muscles become more efficient, thereby requiring less energy and oxygen to produce a certain amount of force, which in turn equates to less fatigue for a given running or cycling pace. Another benefit of strength training is increased muscle and tendon resilience, and a reduced risk of injury⁽³⁾. Given the potentially disastrous impact of injury on performance, this upside cannot be overstated.

Previous research

As we mentioned above, the benefits of strength training are well documented, supported by a large body of peer-reviewed evidence in the scientific literature. However, it is fair to say that when it comes to athletic performance, much of this prior research has been based on lower body strength training. This is understandable; the majority of sports entail running as a key element of performance, and even those that don’t such as cycling, rowing, XC skiing etc still involve the large and powerful muscles of the lower limbs to generate the bulk of propulsive force. It follows therefore that interventions to assess strength training strategies have typically involved strength training studies where the lower limbs are trained – most commonly using lunges or the squat exercise (see this article).

Upper body training

Of course, not all athletes rely primarily on lower-body strength or endurance for performance. In sports such as climbing, upper body strength is a major performance factor, while in freestyle swimming, the main driving force for propulsion through the water comes from the largest and most powerful muscles of the upper body – the latissimus dorsi muscles of the back⁽⁴⁾. For athletes such as swimmers therefore, rather than incorporating lower-body strength exercises such as squat or lunges, upper body strength training targeting the latissimus muscles of the back is more appropriate.

One excellent exercise that targets these muscles is the simple ‘pull up’, which is known to help swimming performance, especially when performed in the prone position (ie palms facing away from the body)⁽⁵⁾. In a study on competitive swimmers published last year, researchers investigated the effect of incorporating prone pull ups into a strength routine⁽⁶⁾. Eight swimmers participated in this 7-week program during which they continued with their normal swimming and weight training routine but also added in additional twice-weekly pull up training. Before the intervention and again at the end of the 7-week study, the swimmers’ levels of strength and 15-metre/50-metre freestyle swimming performances were assessed. At the end of the seven weeks of pull up training, all the swimmers experienced significant gains in both 15-metre and 50-metre performances, resulting in faster times in the pool (see figure 1). And lest you assume that training the lats with pull ups only benefits shorter anaerobic-type events, research has also identified that there is a strong correlation between pull-ups and swimming performance, particularly in events longer than 400 meters – ie primarily endurance-type events⁽⁷⁾.

Figure 1: Changes in 15/50-metre times following pull-up training