by Edward H. Newland
Weight Training for Water Polo and for Life
Edward H. Newland
Rev Date: Thursday, 16-Jan-97 11:28:50 PST
Weight training is something one should start early, around 10 years of age, and continue as long as you
can physically lift weights to increase muscle strength. Resistance training is a life long process that
individuals should do so they can remain healthy and active all their life. Lack of muscle strength is one
of the major causes of older human beings not being able to take care of themselves. Human beings as
they grow older lose muscle mass and gain fat not because this is something that has to hap pen but
because as they grow older they stop stressing their muscles so their muscles give up. Put a body part in
a cast where the muscle is not used and it will atrophy very quickly. As you grow older if you stop
stressing your muscles by making them wor k they will shrink until you can no long make them
perform. Keeping your muscle mass is key to having a high quality of life as one ages.
When should one start lifting or stressing the muscles so they will grow? The general rule of thumb is
somewhere between 8 and 10 years of age. I don't think anyone feels that heavy weights are a good
thing for young children up until 12 or 14 years of ag e but if a coach or parent knows what he or she is
doing and doesn't try to force young human beings with too much stress one can build up a background
in technique and form that will greatly help young individuals gain power as they grow older. It is i
mportant to work and try to gain muscle mass when the body is growing and individuals have a larger
number of growth hormones flowing through their bodies. Most human beings have the largest number
of growth hormones from age 14 to around 24. Then these growth hormones gradually decrease in
number which is part of the aging process.
When players are young, below the age of 12, it is a good time to teach them the technique of doing the
snatch and cleans and jerks This can been done with a broom handle with no weight. I believe that
young individuals can do many exercises which invol ve nothing but their own body weight like push
ups, bar dips, chin ups, sit ups, crunches, leg raises. rope climb, hand stands or hand stand push ups. For
young children up to 12 I think basic gymnastics gives them all of the above exercises plus teache s
them to deal with body balance and overall body coordination. I have watched several of my
grandchildren doing beginning gymnastics and it seems to me that a basic gymnastic program would do
wonders for early body development particularly the upper body . Swimming is also a good upper body
and overall muscle developer for young bodies.
Starting individuals early will help balance tendon and ligament growth with muscle growth so, as they
grow older they will not have as many injuries. Next, there are three things human beings all need to
develop a productive and healthy life style. These are physical, mental and emotional toughness. These 3
are closely inter-related so starting physical fitness early in life will help young human beings develop
mental and emotional toughness. as well as physical toughness. It is a know fact that yout h in the US is
becoming less fit physically so starting children at the age of 6 or 7 on the road to a physically active life
is really important to the overall health of the human beings in this country. If something is not done
now health care costs will continue to rise which is something we really can not afford.
Water polo, like swimming because it takes place in a liquid, is a sport that really doesn't require a lot of
fast twitch fiber. Watch the hand and foot action of a sprinter in the water and you will see they really
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don't move very quickly in comparison t o a sprinter running. In water polo shooting the ball is probably
the only place where fast twitch fiber may really play a large role in performance. In swimming the dive
is the only place where fast twitch fiber probably helps performance. In both of the se sports power in
the water has to alway be drawn from being able to have a feel for the water. The better one can feel the
water the better one will be able to use the power in their muscles to move through the water. Even in
shooting body balance and feel for the water is much more important to hand speed than a lot of fast
twitch fiber. Because water polo is a contact sport below the water players need and use power to deal
directly with other players. The higher the level the more contact players have to deal with so
developing body power by weight training becomes more and more important.
Most weight training coaches really are not familiar with speed of movement in the water and they don't
understand the concept that to transform muscle power in the water an athlete must first be able to feel
or some way get a hold of the water. Explosive speed just doesn't work or really happen in the water like
it does on land. To transform power from the legs to the upper body to shoot the ball require a great deal
more stomach strength than the same motion done on land. In serving a tennis ball or thr owing a
baseball or football gravity can be use much more effectively to help increase power into speed than in
the water which restricts body motion. Obviously the higher one can get out of the water the more they
can use gravity to help them increase po wer and speed of motion.
The secret, if there is one to increasing muscle strength, is to take a muscle to complete failure or
fatigue. Then the body will react and force the muscle to grow so it can deal with this increased stress.
The harder one stresses the muscle the more th e body will try to adjust to deal with this outside stress
by increasing muscle size and it ability to deliver power. Most physiologists believe at birth you have a
given number of muscle fibers and they don't think you can increase this number but with work, ie.
stress, you can increase the size of the muscle fibers you have been given.. Some people have the
misconception that you can change fat to muscle or muscle to fat but this is not true. Fat cells are fat
cells just as muscle cells are muscle cell s. Fat cell can increase and take over areas where muscle fiber
has atrophied from lack of use and muscles fiber can increase in size under a very thick layer of fat cells.
Also it is important to remember that only muscles burn calories, fat burns nothin g because it doesn't
have the ability to move. The higher your % of muscle mass to fat in the body the higher you basic
metabolism will be. The only way to stay thin is to gradually lose fat while trying to retain muscle mass.
If one tries to lose weight too quickly the body will burn up both muscle mass and fat and your
metabolism will slow down because of the lack of muscle mass. Then when you go back to eating
normally like you did when you had more muscles mass you will gain more fat weight because yo u will
need less calories to deal with what your muscles were burning.
One of the best way to really fatigue a muscle is called zero effort lifting. What is meant by zero effort is
you take the muscle to a level of fatigue where you really have no ability to raise the weight as you
really have no effort left in the muscle to make it contract. There are basically two parts to every lift the
positive or concentric contraction and the negative or eccentric contraction. In zero effort lifting you lift
the weight till you fail in the able to lift it Then with the help of a spotte r the weight is raised and then
the lifter brings the weight down slowly. This is the negative contraction. Then the spotter helps him
raise the weight again then he lowers it slowly The lifter does this till he literally cannot stop the weight
from a lmost free falling. This means he has reached negative failure and the muscle is completely
fatigued. This kind of lifting requires the lifter to deal with a good deal of muscle pain . The pain in the
muscle gets so severe that the lifter gives into the p ain and stops fighting and the weight free falls. The
pain is the most difficult part about O effort lifting. The more you do this kind of lifting the better one
gets at dealing with the pain and the longer he or she can continue in a O effort set. When one moves
from one set to another the lifter wants to keep the rest periods as short as possible. The purpose is
getting the muscle to fatigue and not how much weight one is putting up.
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This type of lifting can be done with almost any lift you want to use. I will give you a couple of
examples.
Do chin ups until you can not get up another time; using a bench help yourself up with your legs then go
down slowly, Help yourself up again and down slowly do this until you can't stop yourself from just free
falling on the way down. This usually comes because the pain becomes so severe you just can't fight
through it any more. Take 10-15 second rest and do this over again until the pain and fatigue stop you
from being able to do the exercise and complete fatigue has set in. At first maybe only 2 set wi ll be
enough to blow you away but as you gain power and the ability to deal with the pain hopefully you will
be able to deal with 6 set.
Then go over and do bent over rowing and go through the same process but start the first lift at say 40-
60% of max. If you have hammered the muscles on the chin ups and you keep the rest short it won't take
very long to bring the lats into complete fatigu e again in bent over rowing. The whole thing is taking
the muscle to positive and negative failure and keeping the rest time to no longer than 15 seconds
between sets. You have to take rest while your partner is taking his muscle to fatigue, Then it is ba ck to
your turn again.
Another good series is 6 sets of 6 reps doing bench presses starting at 80% of max and dropping a little
weight as you reach positive and negative failure and taking only 10 second rest between sets. After
your six sets your partner does his 6 sets and y ou go through this until each man has done 6 sets of 6
reps 3 times. There are many variations of sets and using 80% to 35 % of ones max. but what the
individuals aim is always to fatigue the muscle by forcing it to positive and negative failure as many
times as possible during a workout. The limiting factor is your motivation to deal with muscle pain that
is caused by taking a muscle to positive and negative failure.
It is important to change exercises every 2 weeks because the body will become accustomed to exercise
and the stress will be less if you want to increase muscle growth and development. There are many
exercises you can use to stress given areas of the body . Since you will probably only use 2 or 3 working
a given area these can be changed around every 2 weeks and you will never run out of things to do.
You can set up your exercises so you are basically working with two major areas each morning. Like
Back and Triceps one day M-W; Chest and legs T-Th. Traps, Legs Friday. Or you can work just with
one major area each day. Chest Monday, Back Tuesday, Trice ps and Biceps Wednesday, legs Thursday
and then start over again.
I believe stomach work should be done every day because it is so important. Stomach work is a good
way to warm up so you do it at the start or a great way to end a workout.
There are 5 basic stomach exercises that I feel are worth while.
1. Start off raising the legs and then when they get straight up over your hips raise the hips and legs
as high off the ground as possible then back down again.
2. put knees up and feet on the floor and hands behind head and raise shoulder off the ground
keeping the lower back on the mate and hold in the up position for several seconds. This motion is
easy on the back but really works the stomach.
3. Do stomach crunches. Bend knees with feet off the floor raise shoulders and head up toward knees
these are done rapidly.
4. Bend knees feet on floor hands behind head keeping the back on the mat raise up the shoulders
and rotate toward the left then after you have finished change and rotate toward the right.
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5. Bend knees feet off the floor hand behind head pull up shoulders and touch right elbow to left
knee then left elbow to right knee. How many you do depends on your physical condition.
I feel that if you have time you should spend 40 minutes lifting and 20 minutes doing stomach work. Off
season players should spend at least 1 hour lifting and 20 minutes on their stomachs.
On days you have to miss because of a big exams or because you were up studying you always have
time to run through a set of 1 push up, stand up, drop down, and do 2, stand up, and drop down and do 3
and so forth-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15 push ups , bar dips, or even chin ups. This is a good way
to wake yourself up and allow yourself to study or do mental work for a little bit longer. A set of push
up like this will take about 10 minutes and every one has 10 minutes in a day to work the muscles o ut
and get the body moving. By staying in shape all the time you avoid getting sore and beat up when you
have to start over. The secret is staying in shape not starting and stopping.
What does a weight program like this really take on the part of any athlete? It takes the same thing that
is needed to be successful at anything individuals strive to achieve at. The key things are self discipline
and self motivation. 90 % of life is just showing up. The key is getting up each day and getting it done.
Lifting hard will go a long way to increase mental and emotional toughness. If individuals know they
have paid the price to win they will then have the self respect and confidence needed to allow them to
perform. Self doubt is one of the major causes for poor performance. If an athlete can deal with the pain
needed to lift hard they can be beaten but they wont beat themselves because they will have paid to high
a price so they won't roll ove r.
Every two weeks you should test players and while there are many good ways to test John Vargas and I
set up a good testing program to see if players were really exercising and lifting on their own. We start
them going to failure on chin ups giving them 15 second rest and going to failure again. 5 minutes rest
and have the take 80% of their body weight and bench press it until they reached positive failure 15
second rest and go again to positive failure. 5 minutes rest and do bar dips to positive failur e 15 seconds
rest and go again to positive failure.
We scored these as follows:
l First set: body weight times number of chin ups.
l Second set: body weight times number of chin ups times a bonus of 1/3 of total on the last set.
l On the bench press: number of lifts times weight they were lifting on first set.. Second set weight
lifted times number lifts plus 1/3 of second total.
l Bar dips is number of dips time body weight on the first set. Second set is total dips completed
times body weight plus 20% more.
The second sets are all much harder and give the tester a good idea of how well those tested can recover
and deal with muscle pain. By giving a reward we felt they would try harder on the second set so this
would give us a good feeling for self discipli ne and self motivation of those being tested.
The last test I would give is number of sit up an individual can do in 5 minutes. Have some one hold the
feet down of the individual who is being tested; start with the hands behind the neck and go from flat on
the floor till the elbows touch the knees.
Scoring should be 10 points for each set up from 1-100, 15 points per set up from 101-200. 20 points for
every push up from 201-300. I have never seen anyone make more than 260 in 5 minutes.
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If you have trouble thinking of enough exercises to change every two weeks contact me.
Send e-mail to:Edward H. Newland, UCI Water Polo Head Coach
enewland@uci.edu
