Recently after having a lot of trouble with my knees i decided to follow in many other athletes footsteps and starting training/rehab and Sports Science Lab. I've watched many athletes with the most popular being Troy Polamalu have changed up there training because of constant injuries.
They have Bowflex machines which i think are great tools due to the fact that you can train in them with injuries. So you can still get some stimulus while being unable to do your normal routine. Among many other cool machines, stability ball exercises, etc. They give a good rundown of Bowflex machines here: http://powerliftingbelts.org/best-bowflex-models/
The founders of the Sports Science Lab Marv Marinovich and Gavin Macmillan don't believe in the use of free weights. I don't necessarily agree, but through my experience i understand the purpose of their philosophy, They goal was to create a form of training to where the risk is very low and the pay off is high. It is without question that free weight exercises like squat, clean, deadlift, snatch, bench, etc have a great reward, but when performed incorrectly or done too much/ too often injuries can occur. So their low risk/high reward philosophy is spot on and i think most are willing to agree with that. But the notion that no free weights should be used i don't agree with to a certain extent. Free weights mimic external resistance which is something your going to deal with in most sports and in life. If you an athletes and your job requires to be physical up close and personal other athletes you could use a little extra ummph which can easily be provided through proper weight training.
I think that many of the athletes that benefit from the Sports Science Lab are athletes that are already developed in there particular sport and as an athlete in general. It has limitations in that if your looking to be the worlds strongest man or something similar to that, its not gonna provide you the stimulus you need to excel in that sport but it could benefit those athletes in becoming faster and more flexible. I've only trained there for a week and i like it and will probably continue to there while still doing my workouts outside of there. I do think this form of training would great for kids because of the low injury risk and i think that young children that are competing in sports should be more worried about technique and leave the weights til later.
The last thing i will say for this post is that if there one thing I've learned in life is that balance is very important. So is Sports Science Lab the end all be all? No but it is piece of the puzzle and can be very beneficial for certain people like myself.
