002 Maximum strength

This is building on our conversation from last time when we talked about basically maximum strength and speed and power. So obviously by, you know, kind of definition of covering all of those things in one episode, it was it was pretty high level. So the plan today is to talk about maximum strength and just focus on that thing, just focus on that outcome and talk about all the adaptions that go into it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kind of chat through

uh the kind of mechanisms, but instead of me talking for like twenty minutes and then giving Rob a chance to talk at the end, what we're gonna do this time is we're gonna do this time is actually split it up. So we're gonna talk about a mechanism and then we're gonna kind of

of go and discuss some of the ideas of training programmes and how that might work. So I'm very quickly going to describe a mechanism and then I'm going to throw the ball over to Rob and he's going to kind of uh you know sort of illustrate that and go back and forth a little bit and see how that works.

you know, for you guys. But obviously, you know, we'll be looking for feedback as we go through and uh these episodes. So hopefully, you know, we'll get some audience ideas of how we can make this better, more useful for people who are training athletes or even athletes themselves. So basically today, talking about maximum strength, we're gonna go through um, you know, sort of five or six mechanisms and we're gonna go through the central nervous system ones first and then the peripheral ones.

afterwards that's just kind of that's my been my way of explaining it for a number of years so it kind of works for me. So we're gonna start out by talking about coordination, we'll move on to talk about antagonist coactivation and finally mounit recruitment.

And then as far as the peripheral uh structures are concerned, we'll talk about obviously hypertrophy and you can go and wrap sarcomerogenesis into that for the purposes of today. And then we'll talk a little bit about uh lateral force transmission inside muscles and also tendon stiffness changes very briefly because

That's something that we'll probably have to punt to a separate conversation,'cause it's just a bit difficult for athletic populations to talk about tensitiveness in in one kind of isolated way.

So starting at the beginning, we've got obviously a way all of these things are ways of improving a maximum strength test. So if we're doing, say for example, a a back squat or a bench press as our maximum strength test, which is pretty common in a lot of S and C studies, then what you might find is that that improvement in backback squat one rep max or three rep max, whatever it is that you're doing, will actually improve simply because of the practice effect.

So we'll actually see an improvement in what we call the motor learning of that athlete in respect of the exercise. They'll get better at coordinating it. So ultimately, it's not because the muscles have got stronger and it's not because the brain is sending, you know, more central motor command to the muscles. It's literally just because the overall coordination pattern is

better. So in other words, you can kind of think about it as uh being an improvement in efficiency. So they're actually we're making the exercise easier so that weight lifted is bigger, but the reality is the athlete hasn't actually got you know, kind of a a stronger muscle or a bigger level of activation of that muscle, it's literally just that the movement that we're practicing is getting

you know, kind of better in the respect of the efficiency or as I say, the the motor control of that exercise. So basically this is a a fairly well studied area. There's actually an entire body of literature devoted to motor learning. And generally speaking, of course, we we're looking for a practice effect, so we're looking for ways to maximise the efficiency of the movement and of course practising is

One of the best ways to do that. But of course, getting coach input into the movement to fix small problems, small errors, and getting obviously things like Visual feedback in the form of video, a great way to improve the motor learning situations. And then on the negative sides, you know, kind of we would probably want to avoid a fatigue.

situation because that would, you know, kind of degrade the quality of the movement and imp and fail to then allow the improvement to happen. The reason that all of that works is because It's the quality of the movement in the moment, in the actual repetition that drives the improvement. So if I've you can kind of think about it as like if I've got a particular level of skill in a squat, and then for whatever reason, maybe because I've got a good coach working with me or I've seen some

feedback on a video that I can see what m error I'm making. Or I'm, you know, kind of just in a particularly unfatigued state, so my movement quality is high. Any of those kind of situations, I might just manage to do a slightly better quality repetition on one particular day. My brain will notice that and it'll then upgrade my existing motor programs to kind of reflect that superior performance.

Now there's other stuff we could also talk about, there's kind of external focuses, attention and things like that, but ultimately All of them kind of work the same way. They all work by improving, you know, kind of mode to performance. Rob, are there any situations in the kind of programs that you're writing at the moment where you're actively thinking about improving coordination? Can you kind of walk us through any of that?

So if I'm trying to improve coordination, obviously you're gonna place exercises first in a session. You know, you're talking a little bit about fatigue and avoiding that. So when you're in that fatigued state, your brain is not going to be able to adopt that better motor pattern. So you don't want to place an exercise later in your session when you've done other things prior.

you know, starting off with it. Obviously powerlifters you're starting with your bench, squat, deadlift, depending on the session, whatever it may be. And then if you wanna improve the the coordination specifically at you know, that load you're gonna be working with and that kind of bar speed, using heavier loads, staying uh a bit shy of failure, don't wanna be getting too close and grinding out too many reps.

that point you'll kinda wind up in granting maybe a worse motor pattern. So just staying a bit shy, you know. Two to three reps is kinda like the sweet spot I found for spending a lot of time. as I'm going through a program. Um I don't tend to have people go super, super heavy, you know, unless they're like peaking for a test for a competition. And at that point maybe some heavier singles, you know, closer to a max, things like that. to get even more specific load specific coordination than that

changes as we increase the load. It tends to become slightly more hip dominant as you kind of increase the weight in those exercises. So there is definitely a load specificity associated, especially with, you know, kind of powerlifting performance, which I think is really interesting idea for la kind of practice prior to competition with those heavy loads. I think it's a really, really good point that you are kind of just kind of sailing straight past the jumping.

the kind of exercise that you're trying to improve the coordination of at the beginning of the workout is still not going to get any better. Um and I think this is it's just so important that we communicate to people that

This this coordination improvement is probably kind of a hit or a miss. It's like, you know, if you've if you don't quite get a superior motor program than the one your brain has already got programmed, it's like, well, why would the brain bother changing the one it's already got?

So you kind of got to kind of arrive in that almost perfect state really to to get coordination improvements, which I find it so strange when we see a programme that are designed to improve coordination or intended, not designed. Intended to improve coordination. And there's just a billion reps in there and you're looking at it and going, Honestly, this is this is not ever gonna work. It's it's not possible.

nothing's really gonna happen. So yeah, just really I mean, I guess programming wise, there's so many things that you should avoid. You know, not so much sometimes what you should add in. It's pretty easy to, you know, work with lower reps, heavier loads, be careful about going to failure. Just wind up you know, people wind up doing too much.

And then it really will take away from that session, the next sessions. Um and then you were mentioning coaching as well. So obviously, you know, if you're working with a coach, good chance you're working with a coach because you're newer, your technique is not as good, or maybe you just

are an e more experienced lifter, you wanna just keep improving it. Someone watches footage of you, you know, they adjust bar path slightly on a deadlift, they adjust bar path slightly on a squat or bench, something like that.

and then you immediately learn that pattern, brain and, you know, takes it in. And then the next sessions are automatically gonna be better. I mean, I know I analyze a ton of footage when I have competitive powerlifters, even like my Gen Pop clients, you know, they wanna get good at a dip, a chin up, whatever it may be.

They always think it's weird initially when I'm filming exercises, but it's to show them so they can see it and then obviously to review myself afterwards, you know, see what went well, what did not. But yeah, definitely showing them helps. Quite a lot, especially with people I find that are newer when it comes to training.

if the the client isn't trying to make those improvements on the coordination side. So yeah obviously all of that stuff is fantastic for the power lifter, for the person looking for the one arm chin, you know, for the person just wanting to improve a particular exercise for the for its own purpose. You know, but obviously an athlete who's using a squat or using a bench press in order to support a totally different athletic activity

We don't need to do any of that. It's actually not going to help. And I think this is one of those really interesting things I think I've seen change in the last kind of few few years in the industry. I mean, I remember maybe sort of ten, fifteen years ago, there were people who were saying that Yeah, strength training is like weighted coordination training. And I'm like, no, that's not a thing. So it's really, really interesting to see.

You know, how has physiology has c kind of infiltrated the S and C community, which kind of used to be running around with blinkers on, completely avoiding thinking about anything physiological at all? Now it's kind of integrating it to a certain degree and people are losing the idea that, you know, you can transfer coordination from a squat to a vertical jump, for example. It's just not possible. They're they're totally different things.

So, you know, I think that's that's been a a useful or a beneficial outcome really of the of the of the of the of the movement. But really, uh yeah, basically there's gonna be two totally different categories. We've got the athletes who are using that coordination stuff and all of those techniques that Rob's been describing. And then secondly, we've got the group of athletes who's not really needing any of that stuff. So

A really nice example of this, uh, we'll finish on before we move on to the next mechanism, is that a lot of the time we talk about using an external focus of attention for athletes all the time in everything they do. And that movement again still has quite a big following up even now. But the reality is the way that external focus of attention improved performance is by improving coordination. And, you know, that

They don't actually kind of do the other things that people are thinking they do. So that's really important because it means that we don't want to use an external focus of attention with an athlete in a strength training exercise that is not something they are competing in.

So if you've got a power lifter, then an external focus of attention is fantastic for them in con because it's maximizing the coordination of the movement itself and that then is likely to trigger the adaption after the workout. In contrast, you give a soccer player, you know,

external focus attention in their squat, they're gonna end up getting better at squatting, but not actually going to be transferring that improvement in squat strength to the activity that they actually need, which is for example sprinting or jumping or whatever it might be. So it's really, really important that we kind of understand the mechanistic basis that is underpinning our change in maximum strength. So this is really what this entire podcast is all about. It's like

understanding what is it that's driving the the quality that we're trying to achieve. We're trying to achieve we'll talk about qualities in another podcast. But you know, kind of like um the quality of maximum strength that we're trying to achieve, the outcome, you know, obviously is underpinned by adaptations and and coordination is just

really important in some situations, much or actually relevant in in many other situations. Cool. So to keep us moving, uh let's move on to the next one. Antagonist coactivation. So every joint has agonists and antagonists. And generally speaking, an antagonist will always have a certain relatively low level of activation, but it can be further reduced with training.

Now, there's a couple of interesting things here. Uh, we were actually talking about this before the podcast because it's one of those areas that's a little bit more of a grey area than it might at first appear. Because on the surface you look at it and you go, the way to improve antagonist co activation is pretty much the exact same way that we would improve coordination. So is it therefore highly specific to the movement and therefore we can kind of bundle it in?

with coordination, and that's how I've actually taught it for a number of years. Yet if you look at some of the studies, there are a few indications where it looks like it might be less movement pattern specific and a little bit more joint specific than at first might appear.

It's kind of like a sort of halfway house. It might be movement specific or it might be somewhat movement specific, but it could also be, you know, a little bit joint specific. But ultimately, it's just benefiting mainly from the stuff that we uh kind of would use to improve coordination. So if we're using it sorry, sorry, sorry, if we are doing a

training program to improve coordination, it will automatically improve. But if we are thinking about a, for example, a situation where we we want to improve performance in, you know, kind of lower, say for example, again, the same example the the soccer player trying to improve. uh leg strength for sport, we could actually get a little bit of an antagonistic activation reduction transfer, um, from, say, a squat if we were to use some of the technique

that we would use in coordination improvements. So it actually gets really messy. So it's like the issue is though that the improvement in coordination is gigantic in comparison with the improv or the strength induced improvement in perfor or the Yeah, the improvement in maximum strength that we might measure as a result of a coordination improvement is huge.

the improvement in maximum strength we might measure as as a result of a reduction in antagonistic coactivation is a lot smaller. So the reality is anytime you're doing any of those things we talked about just now with respect to coordination improvements,

Yes, you're also gonna get a reduction in co activation, but they're just not of the same scale. So, um Rob, do you have anything to say about this?'Cause I know when we were talking about it beforehand you said that you kind of, you know, wrap this in with coordination, you don't really see it as a separate thing very much.

too far from that main lift. The other thing I would say, I see this all the time in programs, it ties in with reductions in antagonist activation, is people will program like incredibly unstable variations of exercises. You know, the classic I've seen was like bamboo bar bench presses. hanging band squats and things like that. And they get a huge gain in those exercises, due to obviously coordination, but also much, you know, bigger and faster changes in coactivation.

And it's like they think that this giant gain they've seen in that very unstable exercise is gonna drive a gain in the main lift. And it's just it's not gonna happen. The recruitment pattern is not the same. The fibers you're accessing are never gonna be the same.

And I I see it over and over and over and I've had clients ask about it, if I would program them, you know, like that bamboo bar bench press and these things to enhance stability and help drive the main lift. And I'm like, it's not really gonna work out the way you think it is. So we're not gonna

uh with an unstable surface, they think that that's going to reduce coactivation. Now when we talk about speed probably next time we will talk about the importance of coactivation in the sprinting activity because yeah, you you do kind of want to reduce coactivation if you can. And it does actually reduce to a greater extent in fast movements than it does in slow movements.

Um, you know, so there's that. But an unstable surface activity can't replicate or an unstable load activity, I mean kind of same category really, won't replicate that effect. So Yeah, I mean, again, um it's it's a really interesting area. Um and it's probably more relevant for talking about in a speed context than it is in a strength context. As you say, probably the only thing we would kind of be able to do that's separate from a coordination issue

is just to keep those exercises in the programme because yeah, as you were saying, activation does take pretty long time to actually reveal itself. The reduction in coactivation does take a long time to reveal itself. So it probably is a really long grind of a process. Cool. Did you have anything else you wanted to say on that or is that probably enough for that?

uh recruitment increases are muscle specific. So if we improve the mu the the ability of a brain to send the centromotor command to the muscle, we can activate more muscle fibers, produce more

force. So this is a real kind of muscle force improver. It doesn't change the structures really, but it is changing the ability of those structures to get switched on. And yeah, muscle specific I mean it's one of my favourite ever strength training studies showed that if you train literally the rec femor as a hip flexor, it actually improves voluntary activation, motor crew and

in then in in the rect females and knee extensor. So you know, fantastic kind of uh data. So yeah, massively transferable. You can literally train it however you like and it'll improve maximum strength in any sporting situation as long as that muscle is being used. Um, and basically really the trigger for this kind of um sort of adaptation seems to be just hitting as high a level of motor unit recruitment as we possibly can, you know. So

You know, this s I I sent you a a note before the podcast with this kind of massive list of things that we were kind of laughing about. But basically there's so many things that we can do. So, you know, let's not go t We we could probably do a whole episode on just that, but you know, rather than kind of going too into too many uh mess

to help you hit a very, very high level of recruitment. You can do, you know, any kind of like example like maybe before bench press a peck fly isometric, before squatting, just a seat and knee extension isometric, things like that. Just very brief.

you know, one or two reps in your warm-up for squat, deadlift, things like that. Maybe doing just like a vertical jump prior to the lift. Um, you know, again, you're gonna get really high levels of recruitment from those very, very fast movement speeds as well. So something like that. And that would give you transferable improvements in quads, hip extensors and those things. In the context of like athletes needing to run faster,

Definitely some like hip flexor isometrics. One that I like to use a lot is uh where you kneel on a bench and just drive one of the legs, you know, into the bottom of the bench, just like three to five seconds again. That one works really nice.

Um, but I've gotten to like the isometrics a lot, really like the the jumping and that. And then in terms of just like general programming, you know, similar honestly to the way you would go about the coordination improvements, kinda do similar things like heavier loads, lower rep. Um, you know, not using those very high rep sets'cause I think people tend to think, Well, by the end of that set of ten, twelve, fifteen, you're getting a a very high level of recruitment.

Similar to what you would get at the beginning of a set of three to five. And you know, realistically, probably by the end of it, you're not getting quite that same.

that, you know, recruitment is the same, you know, at the end of a light load strength training set and a heavy load strength training set because effort is the same. And it's like, well, no, it's not.

It's interesting that you're kind of using the the entire for well, not the entire force velocity spectrum, obviously, because you're not you're not described eccentrics, but you're using a very wide part of section of the force velocity spectrum. You're using very fast repetitions like jumps.

maybe throws or whatever. You're also using maybe heavy loads in the context of the workout itself, and you're using brief isometrics, you know, so you're actually covering the entirety of the concentric part or isometric and concentric part of the force velocity spectrum. And I think some people might be surprised by that. It's like, well

You know, is recruitment really the same in all of those contraction modes? And i it absolutely is. You know, it's just literally keep the fatigue down, keep the sensations down, hit maximum effort in any of those contraction modes and it or velocities and contraction modes. And it's uh gonna work just fine for improving Motunic Kruman novels. So that's a pretty cool way that you illustrated that. So

So that's motor unit recruitment and as I said at the beginning of that section, massively, massively transferable. So we can do, you know such an im make such an improvement on an athlete athlete's performance by pursuing that particular adaptation. And as I say, we just have to aim for the maximum level of recruitment. So

you know, all of the things that Rob was saying gonna be totally applicable. We could add in some other bits and pieces like, you know, the way that we're coaching, for example. We could focus on giving, you know, some strong encouragement during each of the repetitions that we're aiming for.

to improve that particular adaption. So if we've got a section at the beginning of the workout where we're trying to improve routine equipment with some isometrics, we can be giving that strong encouragement.

if we've got the ability to measure and provide numerical actual feedback to the athlete of those isometrics, that's even better. But you know, obviously that requires some equipment, you know. But there's lots and lots of things and as, you know, we were saying, we'd probably do a whole episode on

Wrapping all of that up at some point in the future. But massively transferable, massively modifiable as a coach and as a person writing the training programme. Cool. So moving on to the uh peripheral side of things, we obviously got

hypertrophy as a you know kind of a an important category th of adaptation that improves maximum strength. It does that by adding, you know, kind of myofibrils and it adds myofibrils obviously in parallel. We can wrap sarcumerogenesis up into this. Now Some people don't like it when I do this and let me just very, very, very briefly explain. If you're adding Socamesin series and those Socamesin series are added in a way that has customers attached to them, they will function like

sarcomares in parallel. So essentially the way that lateral force transmission works is it sends the sarcomer force to the endomycium, which then sends the force down to the

tendon. If you have that costomeric force direction, so laterally then longitudinally, it is literally exactly the same thing as adding myofibrils in parallel. So some people have got really, really excited about sarcomerogenesis and they've argued that it can never improve muscle fibre force because it's in series and it's like, well, no.

lateral force transmission means that it can. So if you've got that costumeric addition and we do see very high levels of costumeric addition with each centric training, which is when you've got the most sarcomerogenesis happening, ultimately we are going to see that improve muscle fibre force in exactly the same way

as we would see, um, you know, kind of hypertrophy of an increase in the diameter of the muscle fibers. So when I say hypertrophy today, I'm kind of not really respecting the uh strict definition of hypertrophy as a fibre diameter increase. I'm kind of wrapping up sarcomerogenesis into that. So we think muscle mass is increasing. And that's going to increase force production by increasing the number of cross bridges that we're capable of forming. So ultimately, um, you know, it's something that

we all talk about all the time, hypertrophy, you know, but in an athletic context it actually has some really interesting applications and problems. Now we're gonna go into some of the issues with the problems next time when we're talking about speed.

And we'll come back again. I mean everything is connected in athletic performance, so I just keep saying we're gonna talk about this again. But we will talk about it again when we talk about proximal to distal sequencing because one of the aspects of proximal to distal sequencing that really kind of, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it, is that most of the time your athletes are going to benefit more from proximal muscle mass improvements rather than distal muscle mass improvements.

And that's just because of the way that that kinetic sequencing works. And as I say, you know, I keep saying this, but we will talk about that later on. Um, but, you know, I guess really the thing that we can latch on to today and point out is that Mae'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n.

Obviously for powerlifting it you can kind of be very, very granular about it and be like, well, you know, this um you know kind of muscle is gonna help do this particular lift. And specific people, you know, different muscles are gonna help them move forward because they've got these weaknesses or these problems. But in terms of other sports, can you think, Rob, of any example where you've targeted specific muscle mass for athletes to help them with a particular sport?

You need massively strong arms, massively strong back, strong hips, things like that, and big, big muscles all over there are very helpful. I know people tend to tend to think in all these sports are like techniques. is gonna be the driver of, you know, whether you win, whether you lose. But if you have two people whose technique is the same, one guy is stronger and has much bigger muscles and, you know, maybe less body fat, that guy is probably gonna maul you.

So whenever I've coached grapplers, whenever I've coached kickboxers, I do quite a bit of back work, lat work, you know, something like wide grip pull downs, wide grip pin ups, obviously for the arms, direct arm work, um, which people tend to freak out a little bit when I first started coaching them sometimes. They're like, This seems like a bodybuilding program and they're like, Well, this portion of the program is bodybuilding. You're trying to grow your muscle. So yeah, use a lot of that

kind of processes work and this is how it feeds into the program design and you know, I've talked about that for the last couple of years and people are probably at this point sick of hearing it. But in the context of athletic training program, that stuff doesn't change. I think people kinda go

Because I'm an athlete now I have to train differently. And it's like, well, yeah, but if the if the goal is the same, how will you fit your muscle doesn't know that you're an athlete. It's like it's like the goal is

If you're trying to improve this adaptation in order to improve your maximum strength, and I think it comes back to this same criticism that I had last week, and I'm probably gonna see people can probably play a game and see if I mention this every single episode. But basically it's like You know, people I think in S and C believe, either consciously or subconsciously, that their athlete is a computer avatar with a little strength number next to it that tells you how strong they are.

And it's like strength is something you can kind of improve directly as like a little number. And it's like, no, it's not. It's a series of adaptions like we've been describing today. that all are affected by different stimuli and therefore require different considerations in the context of a training programme. It's like you're trying to improve the coordination of your back squat to get better at back squatting. You're gonna do these things.

If you're trying to improve hypertrophy, you do these things. And oh look, that's identical to what the bodybuilders are doing over there. You know, it's like, well, why wouldn't that be the case? You know, it's it's really crazy when you kind of break it down like this. But I'll

So it's more, you know, full body sessions, heavy loads still, you know, low to moderate rep ranges. You know, four to eight is always gonna be a great range, as long as you can execute the movement well. And then keeping for athletes at least, generally a few reps in reserve. You know, when I'm trying to go about good hypertrophy training and programs for athletes, I'm always also looking at how it's going to impact their sport training. So usually it's two full body sessions a week.

maybe three, low to moderate reps, little bit side failure, more stable, constrained exercises, you know if we want to grow quads. It's gonna be a leg extension, pendulum squat, leg press, things like that. If I wanna grow arms, it's gonna be a curl, you know, single arm curl, something like that. I'm not relying on like other people might, these big compound movements.

to get the muscle mass increase, this is not gonna get the job done. You know, if I want someone's arms to be as big as they can be and as strong as they can be, doing maybe, you know, just the chin up or just a wide rib pull up.

probably not gonna cut it. If I want someone's quads to be as big as they can be or their glutes to be b as big as they can be, you know, maybe just doing a a deadlift, a trap bar deadlift, something like that, is not gonna cut it. So it winds up being Yeah, essentially just bodybuilding style training, but with better rep ranges, I would say, that are gonna get you stronger and leave you less fatigued and less impact on your sports sessions and your training through the week.

I think the the negatives that come with conventional, you know, kind of mainstream bodybuilding are negatives that shouldn't be there. You know, they should never have been put into bodybuilding in the first place. if we kind of train in a way that makes sense physiologically to b do bodybuilding, it would actually be identical to the way that you're putting athletic programmes together anyway, I think. But

Yeah, so that's that was actually really interesting. I mean, I I would kind of add that, you know, there's some really nice data around sprinters. I put a whole kind of we'll probably do a podcast on it, a whole kind of series of studies showing how specific muscle areas in the lower body

are really helpful for improving performance in sprinters. And some are actually negative. And I I really, really like that because it it illustrates uh the kinetic sequence that we'll talk about. It illustrates the role of speed or how speed works and what's d the determinants of speed. Yeah, but ultimately if you start adding muscle mass, say for example in the calves or the quadriceps and trying to get better at sprinting,

it's not actually going to play out the way you think. Uh you actually want that muscle mass to be much more proximal around the hip area to make that improvement work. Uh again, uh I'll explain that fully later on. But yeah, just a nice example of how

You know, I think sprinting is probably the best example of how, you know, we know for a fact,'cause we've got data showing that you can add muscle mass in this area and it'll help. You add muscle mass in another area and it actually doesn't help. In fact, it can actually make the athlete slower.

You know, it's not one of these d things where you can kind of just go, Oh well we're gonna do massive hypertrophy programming for every athlete and then just let them play the sport like some people are saying. It's like no no no no no, that doesn't work. It's like, you know, okay, if you're going from nothing to something, okay, that probably is gonna work.

But if you're already doing strength training, you're already doing athletic training, you're already pretty good at what you do, then don't just do a strength training program that somebody's written for a bodybuilder and expect it to improve your sporting performance, because it probably won't. you do actually need to kind of target the muscle mass in particular areas like

So the examples that you've given and the example that I just gave there was printing. Cool. So let's wrap up with these final two adaptations. Um basically I mentioned lateral force transmission earlier.

Well we know that costumes do get added to muscle fibers. We don't know that that does improve lateral force transmission, it improves the efficiency of the fibre force. transmission to the tendon and makes the fiber produce a higher force fo than what it was doing previously. And that makes people stronger relative to their size, even in a isolated single muscle level, without thinking about the CNS or anything that the neural side of things is doing. So really, really cool adaption. Um

And I always kind of like get to this point and I'm excited just talking about this and then I realise that we don't actually know how to make it actually happen. Because we've got so little data on the adaptation. It's like, you know, wow, this could be fantastic. If we could make this happen all the time then

wouldn't this be so cool? And it's like, well yeah, but nobody knows. So, you know, we've just got data showing that it does improve strength in, you know, kind of the first couple of months of strength training. Does it kind of plateau with maybe sarcomerogenesis around the sort of two or three month point? Very possibly. Does it plateau later on or does it carry on? I mean nobody knows.

And how do we trigger it? Well, you know, not really sure. There's some data suggesting that eccentric loading might be slightly better than concentric or isometric loading for improving this adaption. But for me that just kind of makes me think, well,

If I add more Socomas in series, then I will actually need more customers because I've now created a whole bunch of Socomas without customers. So you're gonna need that adaptation anyway just because she's creating a kind of a a requirement for it. So that doesn't really fill me with confidence that it's a a genuine trigger for the adaptation, but

That's kind of where we are. But yeah. So lateral force transmission, I imagine there's probably nothing in your programmes, Rob, that you're doing specifically to increase lateral force transmission. It's just kinda like if it happens fantastic.

maybe is why um, you know, kind of historically people were thinking that there's a way to improve myofobular density or something like that. I would imagine that lateral force transmission increases probably do contribute to that kind of effect. But you know, equally myofibrillar density does drift upwards over time. It does kinda you do kinda sort of get increased myofibrils relative to sarcoplasm just as a result of time spent strength training. Now we see that in the cross sectional data.

But not really probably an adaptation in and of itself that's we can kind of train for, unfortunately. So that's lateral force emission improvements. And then of course, finally we've got tendon stiffness changes. This is technically

mechanism of maximum strength. If you make the tendon stiffer, you will improve isometric and concentric force production because what will happen is the tendon will move less and that means that the muscle will shorten less quickly for the same joint angular velocity. As a result,

force for last relationship tells you you'll end up with the higher overall muscle force production. And it's not really because of anything that you've done to the muscle, it's just because you've allowed it to shorten it to slower speed. Now the problem with that, as we were, you know, again talking about very briefly before we came on today, is we're deciding how to describe tender stiffness to you guys today.

The issue is that when you use the straight shortening cycle everything flips around and you kinda want a more compliant tendon and not a stiff tendon if you want a high straight shortening cycle performance because

the tendon actually then allows the muscle to stay short the whole time. So we're gonna have to kind of do a separate episode on the stretch shortening cycle and explain how that works because and so ultimately whenever we're thinking about tendon stiffness we're always kind of going, do I want tendons to be stiffer because my athlete is

you know, exposed to situations with really heavy loads and slow speeds like powerlifting, in which case tennis stiffness is a win. Or is my athlete, you know, kind of spending most of the time moving around really quickly, in which case I probably want

you know, tendon stiffness to be on the lower side, more normal kind of, you know, sort of physically active person, uh, category side, rather than that sort of super stiff that you a tendon sort of cat category that you would have with a power lifter or someone like that. So ultimately though, if we wanted to increase tendon stiffness, it's extremely load specific. So broadly speaking, we kinda need to be in that kind of ten rip max, twelve rep max kind of territory if we want to

produce an improvement in tendon stiffness. So Really all that means is that if we're working with an athlete like a powerlifter who is aiming to improve maximum strength, then tendency gains or improvements are gonna happen automatically. We don't need to worry about that. Conversely,

If we are working with athletes who are spending a lot of time moving around very quickly, soccer players, track and field athletes, uh trying to use a straight shortening cycle regularly as part of their uh sport, then we actually want to be cautious about, you know, kind of triggering

large improvements in tendon stimulus, especially if we're not, you know, doing the necessary training techniques to improve the muscle uh's ability to pull that tendon around. Because ultimately any time you've got a muscle tendon uh unit in sequence Um, you're gonna have the muscle pulling on the tendon or the tendon pulling on the muscle, and ultimately one is gonna pull the other to a kind of uh sort of longer length.

If we want ultimately to want to decide how that process works, we're gonna have to start with analysis of the sport and then just decide whether we want a stiffer tendon or a more compliant tendon and then work from there. Um but as I say, we'll cover that in uh much more detail in a future episode. We don't need to we need to go into detail on that today. We can kind of part that. So ultimately that is everything that we wanted to say today. Maximum strength.

you know, six adaptions. We've got three in the central nervous system, three in the periphery. Hopefully with Rob's examples we've been able to show you how we might go about, you know, or illustrate, not necessarily show in detail, but illustrate, because this is a fairly short podcast.

illustrate how we might go about targeting specific, you know, adaptations for specific purposes, for specific athletes, and just kind of give you an idea of how you might be able to do that in your own programming. So I'm gonna leave that there for today. Rob's had to go. He's got something else to do, so uh he won't be available to say goodbye to you guys. But uh thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it. Please do give us feedback on social media.

Um, we'll be back next week talking about speed and hopefully that'll start to build a picture of how these qualities can be improved.