Friday, February 19, 2010

Further clarification on Tension by Pavel...

"our nervous system is guided by the 'dominanta', the single focus, in our case lifting a weight. Additional excitation (tension) feeds this dominanta and allows one to be stronger. Focusing on the tension and forgetting about lifting changes the dominanta, as it happens with a heavy gripper. So use as much tension as possible—without shifting your focus from lifting. This will take practice. In the beginning you will see a lot of 'coordination tension', beginner's stiffness during skill practice. It makes you weaker. As you get better you will learn to channel the tension into strength as a gymnast or a lifter."

As much tension as possible without shifting focus from the lift.
As skill improves you will learn to "dial in" the right tension to maximize the lift.

Kind of like a hair cut - you can always trim more (tension - if you start with enough) but you can't add it back if you take too much off (once the "relaxation" has removed it).

Training today will be light Hip and Shoulder openers (maybe a few Get-ups) and 1# and 2# Club swinging...
Then I hit the road to Alexandria, VA.

2 comments:

Randy Hauer said...

Hi Brett,
How does this concept of "just enough tension" relate to the High Tension Techniques and Feed Forward Tension? Are white knuckle tension/muscle hyperirradiation from PTP now on the scrap heap of history along with Communism?
R

Brett Jones said...

Nope - it is not on the "scrapheap" - it is just properly applied - enough to enhance the lift but not change the lift. This is a skill developed from beginner to advanced along the journey to the skill of strength.

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