Specific Athletic Movement Emulators

[Guest guest]

Supertrainer challenge - critique the strength training device at the

following web site.

What are the pros and cons to training on such a device?

http://www.sameinc.com/

<Specific Athletic Movement Emulators

The Golf Swing Emulator is a sport specific and movement specific weight

training machine.

This is the cutting edge of golf strengthening and golf training systems. While

using the Emulator

you are forced to perform the downswing with the correct muscle firing

sequence. It will not allow

you to cast or Come Over The Top. The resistance encountered while using the

Emulator not only

strengthens your golf specific muscles but it also turns on the motor memory or

muscle learning

switch. The Golf Swing Emulator is the only teaching and training aid that

forces the user to feel

which muscles must be used to hit the ball with power and ease. Training on the

Golf Swing

Emulator is guaranteed to take your game to a performance level that was

previously thought

to be unobtainable. .

[This uncorroborated marketing hype is based entirely upon the fallacious belief

that effectiveness

of (supplementary) sport specific training refers to the simulation or emulation

of actual

sporting movements with added load. There is no research which definitively

supports this notion,

though there is far more contrary research which stresses the specificity of

transfer without added

loading. The added loading, and alterations of torque, rate of force

development, peak force, timing,

acceleration and centre of mass throughout the range of movement produce a

movement which is

specific unto itself and not to the unloqaded natural sporting movement. In

other words, using such a

movement enhances one's performance on that machine and not necessarily in the

golf swing (of course

there is not just one ideal method of swinging a golf club, since one changes

one's club, swing and method of

striking the ball, depending on where the ball lies, weqather conditions,

distance, course etc etc).

My article on " Functional Training Revisited " (Strength & Conditioning Journal,

published by the NSCA ,

Oct 2002) offers far more detail on the facts and fallacies of " functional " or

" sport specific training " ,

as does the latest edition of " Facts & Fallacies of Fitness, Ch 22, 2003).

These " Specific Athletic

Movement Emulators " offer no proven or useful training benefit over free

weights, pulley machines

and PNF, so anyone who buys one is showing a serious lack of understanding of

the science and

art of strength conditioning and motor learning. Unfortunately, there are going

to be enough

gullible trainers and members of the public who will ensure that such spurious

training toys

will be sold. Mel Siff]

-----------

Burkhardt

Irvine, CA

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