Chain exerciser and trainer

The invention relates generally to the exercise, sports and training industries and more particularly to a chain exerciser and trainer.

As professional sports become more and more competitive, athletes must train and improve their skills continually if they want to stay in the game. In fact, athletes at all levels must spend many hours each week in training in order to remain competitive. As the level of competition has grown, simply spending time “in the gym” or “exercising” is no longer sufficient for an athlete to remain competitive. Instead, experts insist that athletes must focus on exercising “smarter and more efficiently” instead of just “more.”

Sports scientists and conditioning experts have developed very effective training exercises and programs to increase linear speed—i.e. sprinting in a straight or diagonal line, vertical jumps, long jumps, etc. However, no effective methods have yet been developed to help athletes increase the speeds at which they can execute complex, multi-joint, multi-plane movements (e.g., throwing, kicking, paddling and swinging bats/clubs/rackets), especially in highly trained, high-level athletes. The main reason why increasing the speeds of complex athletic movements has been so challenging is that no existing conditioning methods or devices are both specific enough and fast enough to stimulate a body to perform at increased speeds while working against high resistance levels.

Traditional training methods involving weights, medicine balls, resistance cords or bands, etc. are too slow to adequately train a body to accelerate a racket, golf club, etc. from rest to contact speed in the necessary fraction of a second (e.g., a tennis racket should reach full contact speed in one tenth of one second). For example, consider a typical weight training exercise such as the bench press. The total time involved in one repetition of the exercise can be one to two seconds—ten to twenty times slower than many of the movements for which an athlete is training.

According to the physiological principles the body uses to generate “complex” speed, the most direct and most effective training method to increase racket speed (or any complex athletic movement like bat speed, etc.) must integrate at least four key elements. First, an athlete should train using the exact movement pattern that he or she will be using in the chosen sport. For example, a tennis athlete needs to train stroke muscles, not bench press muscles. Training exercises should recruit the exact nerve pathways and muscles involved in a given movement. Second, training exercises should be executed at “event speeds.” This means that the repetitions for any racket speed training exercise, for example, would be performed in only one tenth of one second (or faster). An athlete would likely tear his or her pectorals or triceps trying to perform the bench press at this speed. Third, a training regiment should trigger the same muscle contraction type as that used in the sporting event. Again using tennis as an example: the athlete should train the muscles that contract during a serve, not those used in the bench press. Training exercises must trigger the Strength-Shorten Cycle (SSC) that powers every complex athletic movement and directly stimulates the exact type of muscle contraction used to produce the movement. And fourth, a training program should “overload” the muscles that will be utilized in order to produce more force during the actual event. Training exercises must deliver higher resistances than those experienced during the actual event in order to stimulate increased force production by the muscles producing the movement.

Thus, lifting weights, while a useful and generally positive training and exercising regiment, is really just a “shotgun” approach to sport-specific training. The athlete builds and develops many muscles, but trains those muscles to react slowly and to move in the patterns necessary to lift the weights, not to respond in fractions of a second and make the specific, complex movements that are executed in competitive sports. While many other training and exercising regiments and devices exist besides weight lifting, they all fail to address the four key elements described above. For example, there are previous devices known in the art that have utilized chains (e.g., “Louie Simmons” weightlifting chains). However, those devices focus on strength development and do not address speed or acceleration. Furthermore, the chains employed are heavy, fixed-size chains intended to increase the weights used in powerlifting and do not address the four elements above.

“Speed training,” an effort to recognize and respond to at least some of the above elements, has come to the forefront of the art in the past two decades. In an effort to bridge the gap between strength and speed, plyometrics were first introduced from Russia in the 1980s. Also known as shock or jump training, they were initially considered a radical form of power training but are now well known and used by strength coaches and athletes around the globe. Some plyometrics involve medicine balls, some require boxes (for jumping on and off) and some do not use any overload. These are useful exercises that make training for speed and power somewhat more efficient versus older methods and devices. However, medicine ball exercises are a bit slow and are in need of more speed. Box plyometrics are seen as very intense but bring the potential for impact injuries from the landings. And if there is no overload on the exercise, there is certain inefficiency because in order to get any training benefit the volume of work must be higher. Although useful, standard plyometrics do not provide a complete solution.

Therefore, an exercising and training device is needed that will address these longstanding challenges in athletic conditioning.

Embodiments described and claimed herein address the foregoing challenges by providing a chain exerciser and trainer. The chain exerciser and trainer delivers on all four required training elements of complex speed development described above. The device possesses the dynamic, variable resistance that is necessary to satisfy all four elements. Training with the chain exerciser and trainer simulates the exact movement patterns of the sport in question. Execution of training exercises can be accomplished at high contraction speeds. The chain exerciser and trainer stimulates activation of the SSC in the muscles being trained while providing the overloading necessary to improve the contraction force of those muscles.

The chain exerciser and trainer has a handle portion constructed to be extremely lightweight and yet strong. This configuration provides an athlete with an exerciser and trainer having almost no dead weight at the beginning of the movement. The handle portion can be shaped and sized to resemble the handle of any piece of sports equipment used by an athlete, including, but not limited to: a tennis racquet, a golf club, a baseball bat, a softball bat, a hockey stick, a lacrosse stick, a field hockey stick, a weight bar, a racquetball racquet, etc. The handle portion can also be shaped and sized so as to fit comfortably across the top of a user\'s shoulders. Attached to the handle are one or more chains. The initial chain links are small and lightweight. However, as the links progress outwards, away from the handle, they increase in mass. The resulting device provides free-flowing variable resistance instead of dead weight. This configuration allows the exercise movements to be as fast as possible while still offering a high resistance at the right time. Compared to exercises with resistance bands or rubber tubing, which provide only unidirectional resistance, the chains allow for working in two directions concentrically. And unlike free weights that offer positive resistance on the upward motion and negative resistance on the downward direction, chains provide an oscillating resistance that works the athlete in two directions simultaneously.

Another unique attribute is that unlike typical isotonic devices where the heavier weights are moved slower than the lighter weights, the faster an athlete moves this device, the higher the resistance that will be encountered. This makes the chain exerciser and trainer perfect for simultaneous speed and strength development.

The chain exerciser and trainer also enhances the ability of athletes to exercise and train while undergoing injury rehabilitation. An athlete can test his or her injured limb or muscle against the resistance slowly at first to get low resistance and then faster to meet greater resistance as the injury heals.