⁠Nordics for SPEED? @atgusamade

So don't hold these to the mouth, hold this to the mouth. Just got the new Nordic bench from atg. They got the assisted adjustable Nordic bench. So me working my way down, it goes all the way up to 45 and going a bit lower as I go. There's a lot of subtle differences how you execute repetitions. You can lift the back up, lift the shoulders up first by having the assistance you. You can really play with those different patterns and not feel as though it requires maximal strength. The other variation is to kind of use the arms as well. Throwing out the bottom. Throwing out the bottom. Some people will say, oh, you can't do that. That makes you a bad person if you're using any momentum. But in sports, there's going to be momentum, there's going to be impact. So I don't think it necessarily makes you a bad person if you do them explosively. Probably the contrary. Probably makes you a better athlete. And being a great athlete is part of being a great person, or it can be, depending on how you view your athletic journey. Yeah, these Nordics, they didn't used to be. For those of you who are a little younger, 41, didn't used to be almost any athletes who could do Nordics, you would do them with a partner and you would lift the partner up. If you were really strong, it was just messy. You would be jamming your feet into the ground and it creates a bit of a decline angle rather than flat. This bench, it's not overly spongy. There's some other benches that I've used, the Atlantis one, it's very spongy. This one is firm, but, yeah, very nice. So I actually like that instantaneous tension because if you're sprinting, you're looking for that instantaneous tension and you've only got a fraction of a second to produce the force and then you're off the ground again. So if you can't produce that fractional instantaneous tension very effectively, well, you're not going to be very fast. And this is a good exercise to build the structural capacities for top speed running. That's not the most specific exercise for top speed running, but pretty close as far as gym exercises go. You might also want to go out and run fast. But if someone's very strong on the Nordic hamstring curl, like you're seeing someone who can just bang reps like nothing, they're going to be fast at running. It's these things run together. You have extremely high relative strength, but then all you're doing is moving your body. So there is a huge correlation between relative strength and speed and power. You can see this with weightlifters who practice standing up quite a lot, otherwise known as squatting. And because they're able to stand up with so much weight, when they're using their body weight, of course they can jump really high because yes, they've been doing a lot of explosive stuff, but also their body weight is so light. If you made yourself 20 kilos and you're 80 kilos now and with helium balloons you were 20 kilos, like how high would you jump? And so it's the reverse of that. Rather than making yourself lighter, you're being able to produce a lot more force relative to your weight. So that's why there is a correlation to speed. Now we're looking at this position specific thing of where the legs are almost straight. So when the legs are almost straight, that's where we want to be able to produce a lot more force. If I was to be stricter with this, not use my arms at all, it would put even more emphasis on the position where I'm almost straight. If I'm going very slowly from the top, then I'm getting more of a strength and hypertrophy stimulus the whole way down, which is valuable as well. Currently I'm at the second last one I think. Yeah. So you can see there's a long way between 10° and 0°. Maybe there could be a 5°, I don't know. Might not be very easy. From an engineering perspective, I think it's Austin who's doing the engineering at ATG Equipment. Here we go for the flat one. I haven't done one of these. First one I ever did was in Dominican Republic using the Atlantis bench there I think. Then I did some at ATG headquarters as well. See if there's a rep there after doing 50 warm up reps, easier level of difficulty, That's full speed, full explosiveness. Not everyone's going to be ready for that. But I've done a bunch of work on these. I think the heavy like single leg standing pike one for preparing so you don't get damage when you do Nordics is these kind of single leg reaching for the floor. I found that my Nordics improved a lot when I did a lot of volume on these. But with the assisted bench you have the possibility to be very methodical, patient with your progress. I can already feel some doms setting in. The hamstrings get doms very prone to delayed onset muscle soreness. So the assisted ATG bench Has got me back in the game with hamstring work. This you could kind of look at as long range if you're into the long range, short range idea. But because we're not bent at the hips, then the hamstrings aren't really under stretch. I would consider it long range, but not extreme long range. And there's a big difference between the extreme long range, which would be something like a Romanian deadlift, or a stiff leg deadlift, or the Jefferson curl, if you're loading it up. So this is a beautiful thing that the world is now doing. These Nordic hamstring curls, there is a very good chance that's preventing a lot of ACL injuries. It's also making slower people faster. We're seeing some crazy improvements in a good way in 40 yard times and top speed sprinting, you're going to see a big decrease in hamstring injuries if you can combine this long range strength with extreme long range RDL strength. In particular single leg, the standing pike, like I was showing you, you get faster and faster at those. Becomes very, very difficult to tear a hamstring in the same way it's very, very difficult to tear a tricep or tear. You know, there's some muscles that rarely tear. Even quads rarely tear the rectus femoris tears in some people because it gets so exceptionally short and tight. But hamstring tears could become as rare as Cortez. If we knew how to train them, if we understood short range and long range and we were to apply that knowledge intelligently, then it could become as rare even with high volume of top speed sprinting. And a lot of people would disagree with that. But I think we're just not strong enough and we just haven't understood what is required to change tissue integrity. So this is part of the journey. Understanding ATG is not based. It's not just a magical formula of exercises. The trick is in the sequencing and understanding which remodeling effect is going to come from the movement. So this one is going to cause more tissue remodeling in the connective tissue than say a banded hamstring curl or a hamstring curl on a machine where the leverage of the machine means that it's roughly equal tension the whole way. The Nordic is hardest at the bottom. But then the Romanian deadlift, for example, will cause even a lot more connective tissue damage, where the banded hamstring curl variations, whether it's lying or seated, will cause a lot more muscular damage. So you still will get muscular soreness if you do a lot of banded hamstring curls or short range bicep work, it's particularly true for the flexor muscles. The flexor muscles behave differently to the extensor muscles. The extensor muscles you can smash with the short range because it's locking out the joint. The more you understand this, the more you apply this, the further you can go in the gym. But also, whatever else that you're doing the gym for, if there's a purpose beyond just the gym training, and even if you're getting into more acrobatic type movements, parkour or these other things that are kind of related to the gym, almost connected in a way, they're not truly like team sports or recognized sports, but you can progress into these other things if you have your range training organized and then you start to understand the concept of tension. Like I was talking about going explosively out of the bottom. We're using the same weight, my body weight, but if I'm going explosively out the bottom, there's a lot more tissue tension than if I'm attempting to go slowly out of the bottom. I probably wouldn't get out of the bottom. I know I wouldn't get out of the bottom slowly. Right now I don't have enough muscle strength. But when I combine the connective tissue tension and that explosive tension movement, then I get some help from my tendons and fascia as well, and I'm able to get out of the bottom on that movement. So part of the mission this year, a lot of the mission is about returning to best, running around some hundreds the other day. This is part of the mission. What I want for you is for you to be able to have that physical experience, have that magical athletic experience of life experience. If you have any questions about this or if you find it helpful, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feedback Comments what am I missing? What should I add to this? What did I not talk about that I could have, should have, or would have if I'd have known about it? Yeah. Thank you to ATG for improving the Montenegro Village and the experience here in 2024.