I came across an interesting post on one of the Instagram channels I follow. The name of the channel is @squat_university

This post talked about the difference in spinal adaptation that takes place between gymnasts and powerlifters. “Collagen rings” adapt for stiffness in power lifting where as gymnasts adapt for flexibility and resilience. Both are functions to maintain structural integrity for each sport.

So I became curious. What should sports like wrestling and jiujitsu strive for? Spinal integrity through stiffness or flexibility?

Their response: Sport where’re power is generated at the spine through movements will often not be trained with extremely heavy lifting as it won’t lead to the ultimate adaptations and transfer to sport performance goals.

To be honest, I don’t really know what to think of their answer. I’m no expert so I’m sure their answer is way over my head. However it sounds to me like these sports (wrestling, jiujitsu) shouldn’t be training in lifts with very heavy weights. Doing so would impede from the desired goal of spinal adaptation. That’s my guess.

So don’t lift heavy if you do wrestling? Keep your reps at a higher range perhaps?

On the flip side, I got the opportunity to interview a sports performance lab during my trip to India and we talked about yoga. The conclusion, don’t do yoga because it will make you too limber and compromise the integrity of your joints you need to generate force/power. They seem to be talking about the completely opposite problem of having too much mobility and movement.

Ugh. It’s a conundrum for me…. The safe approach seems to not go too much into one side or the other. Make adjustments on a sliding scale of flexibility, strength training, and sport training.

Imagine a 0-100 scale divided into 3 parts from above. Maybe a 20/20/60 split is appropriate to balance your overall training routine. It’s difficult to figure out but I believe knowing the answer will lead to significant performance improvements.