I don’t think too many people would deny the benefits of weightlifting for contact sports, or sports involving power -but what about sports like running, biking, rowing, etc?
Here is a good discussion in the health section of the NY Times. While the general opinion seems to be "yes it does", it’s not unanimous.
Does Weight Lifting Make a Better Athlete? – New York Times
Researchers who study weight lifting, or resistance training as it often is called, are adamant. It definitely helps, they say. But other experts in the field are not so sure.
Gary R. Hunter, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is a believer. He cites, for example, a recent study involving middle-distance runners. Three months of resistance training, he said, improved their leg strength and running efficiency, a measure of how much effort it took to run.
And, he said, it is not just runners who become more efficient.
“There is no doubt that an appropriate weight-training program would improve efficiency in pretty much any athlete,” Dr. Hunter said.
William J. Kraemer, a kinesiology professor at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, said lifting weights also can increase endurance and reduce the risk of injury, especially to connective tissue.
And don’t worry about becoming too muscular, Dr. Kraemer said.
“The fear of getting really big is not plausible for most people,” he said. Competitive distance runners and cyclists, who are naturally slender and light, “don’t have the muscle fiber number to get really big,” Dr. Kraemer said. “I can train them until the cows come home and they are not going to have big muscles.”
But other researchers, like Patrick O’Connor, an exercise scientist at the University of Georgia, are not convinced.
Dr. O’Connor points out that the weight-lifting studies, as is typical in exercise science, are small. And each seems to examine a different regimen, to measure outcome differently and to study different subjects — trained athletes, sedentary people, recreational athletes. It becomes almost impossible to draw conclusions, he said.
That may be one reason why different athletes end up doing different weight-lifting exercises. Chris Martin, a 31-year-old chemical engineer who has an elite racing license from USA Triathlon, the governing body for the sport, works on his entire body. But for his legs, he does exercises like leg extensions using one leg at a time, to correct any muscle imbalances or weaknesses. Mr. Martin, who lives in Lawrenceville, N.J., said he got the idea from coaches and from his own reading.
“Cycling and running are one-leg-at-a-time activities,” he explained. And one-legged exercises “recruit more muscles that help the hips.”
>>>>>>
The main problem with weight lifting is that many people do it all wrong, said Kent Adams, the director of the exercise physiology laboratory at California State University at Monterey Bay. They don’t have a program or a goal. Technique may be sloppy. Or, Dr. Adams said, they use weights that are too light. Muscles need to be stressed if they are to respond, he said.
Dr. Kraemer is on the same page. One study, he said, found that women tend to lift half or less of what they could lift. And this happened even when women were working with personal trainers, he said.
“There is so much misinformation,” Dr. Kraemer said. “It’s a quagmire out there.”
Leave a Reply