015 Powerlifting part 1

So really my section is going to be fairly short today because we've already covered the mechanisms of maximum strength in a previous podcast. So I think it was one of the very first ones we did. So if you haven't heard that, please do go back and review it. Um, very simply, or in summary. There are probably about six or so uh mechanisms of uh maximum strength, as in uh adaptions that contribute to increases in maximum strength caused by strength training programmes.

Um and we can kind of divide those into the um adaptations that happen in the central nervous system and then the adaptations that happen in the periphery. In terms of the central nervous system, our first uh adaptation is obviously going to be an improvement in coordination. Um the second is an increase in the ability to recruit motor. And the third is a reduction in the level of antagonist characterization, which tends to go hand in hand with improvements in coordination most of the time.

In terms of periphery, we've obviously got uh hypertrophy and uh accompanying sarcomerogenesis. Both do pretty much the same thing as long as you've got the customers to attach the new sarcomeres to the endomisium. And then we've got increases in tendon stiffness and increases in lateral force transmission.

So um just summarising how we might go about uh triggering those adaptions. Uh in terms of improvements in coordination, we basically just need to show the brain a better option than the one it's already got uh stored. And that really means um uh kind of getting a better movement pattern out of a exercise than we've done previously. So we actually need to not only hit our very best coordination pattern, we actually need to either deliberately push ourselves to do a better one

by some coaching technique or by using an external folks of attention. Uh we actually need to you know, go b above and beyond the level that we've gone previously. So

Essentially it's uh a replacement of a motor programme or an update to a motor programme. So coaching and external focus attention are great ways to do that. And of course any fatigue that's present is gonna stop us doing that. So that fatigue tends to prevent mot motor programmes from being improved, um, ultimately because it uh causes uh a reduction or a breakdown in our um coordination as we're doing it.

So in terms of increasing motinic recruitment, we need to hit um high levels of recruitment to make that happen. Again, that is um problematic if we're in a state of fatigue or we've got any uh discomforting or unpleasant, painful sensations going on. So need to try and avoid those when we're targeting that particular adaptation. As I say, antagonistic activation kind of link to improvements in coordination.

Um as far as the peripheral stuff is concerned, I'm not going to deliver a lecture on how hypertrophy works. I would be relieved to hear. Similarly, I'm not going to talk about how psychoanigenesis works, but I'm going to assume that most people listening to this have a understanding of that or if they don't then there's plenty of material on my FAQ or in the uh other podcasts that I do with Jake. Um as regards um

Tender stiffness, really that's going to happen as a result of training with heavy loads. Most powerlifters are going to do that, so not really necessary to think too much about that. And lateral force transmission, we don't really have a clear understanding of what is going to be

uh what is the primary s uh stimulus for that adaption. Again, I think it probably does happen relatively uh often with heavy loads. There might be an argument for saying that we need supermaximal eccentrics to really max that adaptation out.

So that might be something that people could think about in um extreme uh scenarios where everything else has been tried, but I wouldn't uh jump to that as uh something that I would look at first of all, because there isn't really a lot of data to support that particular idea. So that basically is the mechanisms of maximum strength.

Obviously, um, just to reiterate, fatigue is gonna create problems for many of those mechanisms and what I mean by that is presence of fatigue while we're doing a workout has the potential to reduce our ability to stimulate those adaptations, especially coordination and motor unit recruitment. So that's enough from me.

Um what we're going to do is we're going to talk about uh the programmes that Rob is currently writing, putting together for his powerlifting clients and uh the kind of things uh that he's doing and hopefully connect that with

the um physiological mechanisms that are underpinning the strength gains that I've just described. So, Rob, kick us off. Tell us about some of the programs you're writing. Give us a quick overview of um focusing on the main lifts. We'll um we'll we'll kind of leave the accessory stuff for another time.

Usually I'm looking to avoid excessively high volumes of training. I'm avoiding excessively high rep. Most of the time in the main lifts, I'm going six and below, few reps in reserve. Uh not a ton of sets. I think kind of the old school programming style with powerlifting. People would do either, you know, volume blocks or volume days. And you'd have something like, you know, five sets of seven, five sets of eight.

and that would probably be with the same load. So if you're working with uh maybe a couple reps in reserve, that might be something like a ten or a twelve rep max and things like that. And I don't really think that those kind of big volume days with those lighter loads are really super useful for strength.

that over that overall volume is gonna be very fatiguing. It's not really gonna give you, you know, specific improvements in coordination relative to like the loads that you're gonna be needing and things like that.

um in terms of hitting high levels of recruitment, you're not gonna hit as high as you will with a heavy load, a little bit shy failure, so you're not gonna get the same adaptations there. And then, you know, typically if you do a volume day early in the week, A lot of people might do the heavier day at the end of the week, or even vice versa, heavy day early in the week, volume day later in the week.

But then your next heavy day still say the following Monday or Tuesday, you're still a lot of the time getting a lot of fatigue carrying over from those big volume days into your heavy, you know, some people call them primary sessions.

And in that case, I've definitely had people in the past who've come to me and who I've coached and they'll have issues on the heavy days where they they feel off, the movement pattern feels strange. Um I'm sure we've all like walked a heavy squat out and it just feels odd.

And that's, you know, that's a product of fatigue carrying over. The movement pattern does not feel as good. Obviously you're not gonna be quite as strong. And then, you know, you might think, Oh, it's just an off day and I've heard that a lot. Yeah, I had an off day, my technique didn't feel crisp, you know, things like that.

And really, you know, I look at that and I go, No, you didn't just have an off day, something throughout the week. Um, you know, whether it's something I did or could be something outside the gym, but has left you fatigued going into that session so that you can't actually execute the way that I need you to. And then like Kristen just saying, you won't get the improvements in that pattern going forward and the strength gains as a result of coordination and that

So the closer we can get to our uh kind of opener weight really, the m the the better we're going to be in terms of making those improvements in coordination happen in a load and task s specific way. So really when we were kind of chatting before the um a podcast today and I was like, you know, the thing that I keep coming back to when I think about powerlifting is how many times can we basically practice the the the kind of the competition lift?

in a state of low fatigue and as close to the weight that they're gonna open with as possible. I mean that's kind of if I were to write a single set statement of what I want to try and achieve with a training programme, that would kind of be it.

And that sounds crazy because you're like, Well, actually then there's a lot of ways that you could do that. I mean, I can imagine, you know, someone with a fondness for clusters like Jake probably putting a a routine around clusters together that would do that. You know, or or as you were saying, rips in reserve would again get us pretty close to that as well. But ultimately sort of going straight in and hitting um sets to failure probably isn't gonna be the best scenario um in most cases.

Um, you know, I keep the tend to keep the volumes even lower on those and the frequency lower'cause they just tend to impact people a lot more than like a sumo, much shorter range and you know, not really usually as fatiguing. You're not

taking anything through a really large range of motion and that. So sumo I tend to find you can program a little bit more frequently and maybe with a little bit more sets and reps. Conventional, I'm definitely going like very low volume options and lower frequency for the most part.

So we're kind of just tempering that urge to do more practice by saying, Yes, your urge is probably valid but you just need to temper it and say, Let's try and figure out a way to meet that requirement with

uh without essentially losing the adaptation that we're seeking in the first place. So that was kind of the that's kind of the place I always start because you know, I think people m massively underestimate just how important coordination is uh for improving strength gains uh across the board, but obviously in um multi-joint exercises more so than single joint stuff.

I I think you said five by seven or something like that, four but five by eight. But that kind of territory uh and then they're trying to come back a couple of days later and do the same thing again or do something different. Um whereas you're getting uh and they they think that that that volume is necessary.

to kind of stimulate meaning h meaningful hypertrophy. To be honest, I have noticed that it's less common now for somebody to um say say to me that they think that A more advanced lifter or, you know, even an intermediate lifter needs to do more volume to stimulate growth because, you know, that volume is forcing the growth in that

I'm not seeing that claim quite so much now. I think the whole kind of um really detailed analysis would be we'd done on things like the weaker net stimulus model and other demonstrations of how um

hypertrophy can occur with quite small volumes like one uh set to failure twice a week. Um I think that's starting to get through to people that that's not really a thing. But um yeah so Ultimately, even though you're programming low numbers of sets and reps and even a couple of reps in reserve here and there, you know, your multiple times per week exposure to those lifts is still going to produce hypertrophy and, you know

majority of the relevant muscles for those exercises, even though the programs are low volume. I think that's probably something that a lot of people would look at your programs and initially go, Where's the hypertrophy part? And I well, it's baked in. I mean it's

or a squat and then a safety bar squat and things like that in succession in a a session winds up getting pretty redundant. And it was the old idea.

But, you know, in the same end of that you could use something isolated and not fatigue the hell out of yourself with a bunch of sets of squat that will toast you for the next sessions or later in the week.

Yeah, no, that's that's that's definitely true. So in terms of um I mean, one of the things I noticed that people really get wrapped up in about powerlifting is the kind of the sets and reps schemes. So that's kind of why when you look at a lot of articles, most of the article is really just taken up with tables with

kind of like this many sets of this many reps and with this percentage of one rep I'm glad we're actually a long way away from that. Like I remember looking at the internet like, you know, ten years ago and every single powerlifting article looked at was just littered with references to the percentage of one right max.

How many sets of how many reps do I do? You know, and how many times a week am I am I doing that? So just kind of prefacing before I ask you the question, let me just preface this with like Um when we're looking at a powerlifting training program, what we're trying to do, like I said at the beginning, is hit these mechanisms of maximum strength.

Uh, we're not really worried too much about um most of the peripheral stuff because that's either gonna happen automatically like the tendons stiffness and the lateral force transmission, or the hypertrophy side of things is either gonna take care of itself um through the main lifts um rep.

um sets, but also with the accessory work that we'll talk about on another occasion. Really we're thinking mostly about the neural side of things. And the neural side of things really is just going to be about fatigue management and avoiding hitting, you know situations where we're doing a rep uh and it's not triggering either an improvement in coordination or an increase in motor unit recruitment. So it's about trying to get a lot of unfatigued reps in is a short way of saying it.

So, like I said before, prob loads of ways of doing this. People could do clusters, they could just do straight sets. I mean there's a whole load of different ways. But in terms of the straight set um options Do you let me ask two questions and you can kind of pick which one you go with to start with. So do you have a uh like a guiding principle of like the total number of reps that you want to do?

Or or separately, do you have a number of kind of set rep schemes that you keep going back to and do they have different kind of reps in reserve and how how does all of that fit together?

Adding a rep or so each session until they get to triples, sometimes push it up to fours even. Um and then just Increase weight.

So if you just manage it very, very slowly like that, you give time for muscular adaptations and tendon adaptations. I just notice people tend to get less pain and stuff that way. They can just train and run a block out for much longer. Yeah. Uh, you know, that way I don't have to start back again, maybe hit a lighter a little bit lighter weight and maybe more reps in reserve or anything like that. I can just run it out for a very long time. Besides that, if I just use

straight sets, maybe like a three by five or three by six. I guess total number of reps is gonna be anywhere from you know, if it's three by two, it's gonna be six. If you work that up to a three by three or three by four, it's gonna be nine to twelve.

Um, you know, I don't worry so much about the total reps and the total sets as I do just week to week. Um checking, you know, how everything's moving, how the bar speeds are, things like that. And just monitoring like, you know, the athlete's feedback. If it seems like it's going well.

I won't change anything if it seems like for some reason they're not responding. Um, you know, at that point I'll assess like what the reason for the plateau might be. And if it seems like it's not enough stimulus, maybe do something where they're hitting a few more reps. If it's it's not usually that and then if it seems like it's fatigue or, you know, not hanging enough for fruit, then go and address those

You know, I might increase the sets, but still keeping the reps low. Since it's another thing people used to think, you know, high reps more recoverable when that is

Yeah. In terms of coordination adaptations. So there is actually an argument to say, well, if you have the ability to do an upper lower split, then you could say, well, a bench is getting a p first position on this second workout and the squatters getting in the first position on the other workout and then you you've actually now advanced the ability to improve coordination in both of those loops. I think that's an interesting point there. Yeah. Um

Either, you know, in the middle or after my day. But someone else might have maybe an hour tops. Yeah. Maybe sometimes it's forty-five minutes. So you gotta figure out ways to split it up and still make it work nicely. Like you said, if you place different priorities on different days, then you can absolutely maximize that lift for that day and it works not.

Um so yeah, so basically just for people who are de you know, sort of definitely listening out for the information of set reps and that kind of thing. Um, you know Starting from a kind of a Hepburn type routine. When I say when we say t Hepburn type, it means that you don't necessarily need to do eight sets of two rising to three with a five rep max.

you know, it can mean'cause I mean I I have vivid memories of doing that. Some of those vivid memories are not very pleasant. Um but definitely I think I I would s probably start with five sets. of of two rising to three. Um even even if it was only two times a week. I think five would probably be my starting point most of the time. Uh I've said before that five sets of three is probably a really solid strength type routine, just in general.

Not necessarily having to be powerlifting, but um but I I do really like the progression model of Tree Rising Tree because as you say, you can kind of just put your sort of brain on autopilot and know that, you know, you've done, you know uh five sets of two this time, and then next time you've got to do an uh one set of three plus four sets of two. And then you just keep doing that and doing that until you've got five sets of three and then you start again. Um

The interestingly you mentioned going up as high as four, so you're going between two and four. I would guess that was when you're starting with a six rep max.

Um I think it really depends on the execution of the lifts. If if Some people are gonna be quite happy doing explosive efforts on every single repetition of every single set. Other people are gonna be like, um, can't be bothered with that. That's that's too much like hard work. So you only really get the kind of max efforts on the end of the set. So I think uh this is a really interesting point. I think it really comes down to the the fine tuning of this really depends on the person.

uh stimuli from the later sets in that workout less effective and it's also going to make problems for the next workout because we're going to arrive in the next workout in a fatigued state, which is meaning that a lot of these neural adaptations just aren't going to happen. And there's going to be a little bit of a reduction in the peripheral ones as well. So

Um I think ultimately uh this kind of fatigue management is going to be really, really important. Um and I've made this point before, but you know, we know that fatigue is a problem for hypertrophy and local uh muscular adaptions, but The difference between central adaptations or central nervous system adaptations and local muscular adoptions is that central nervous system adaptions tend to be quite binary. They either happen or they don't.

Um and so if we just have a little bit of fatigue then we just kind of immediately the rest of the workout's not going to create the adaptations that we're interested in from a neural perspective. So arriving in a fresh state, I think you made a really good point earlier when you were like, you know, off days aren't Just off days, their information.

Um I mean interestingly, just on that, um, do you just go off progressive overload and how people feel, or are you doing any kind of um testing to see whether people are experiencing any kind of accumulative fatigue. So for example, are you doing like a jump test before you do the squat session?

I'll know that something I gotta adjust something maybe the following week and that. It's a very reactive programming style, but it works. It's super easy. Um yeah, I mean that's probably kind of the main test I use. that and just, you know, monitoring. Some people really like the apps to monitor bar speeds and things like that. And if unload from, you know, a previous session, uh, say they're ramping up and it's moving

a a bit slower. I'll know also that something's gone probably wrong in the in the week there.

With that counter movement jump, this is just me asking you a question because I'm interested more than anything else. Um with that counter movement jump, have you noticed um that because Okay. So this will depend on somebody's athletic background. So uh if somebody's coming into powerlifting from a previous uh sport.

th probably this isn't going to be applicable. But if people are coming into powerlifting from from from not having done um kind of maybe t a lot of team sports before or any any kind of track and field, do you find that initially the kind of um vertical jumps are kinda just kinda going up quite quickly.

Let's just look at the history. Has it been kind of skyrocketing upwards over the last kind of um couple of weeks or months because Uh I definitely noticed that when when you kind of introduce um high velocity work, uh like a throw or a uh a jump with people who are, you know, maybe kind of intermediate level powerlifters, um or kind of moving towards, you know, being very competitive. Uh it can just be really misleading, uh because

It will increase motor improvement, but so will the mainlift, so I'm I'm not gonna argue either way for that. But um if we're doing it anyway for the kind of monitoring purpose and we don't need a lot of repetitions to do that. Um and we certainly don't need to be using a barbell to do it. I mean just do it.

Nothing wrong with the single and it'll give you like the the load specific coordination and all those things, but it just chews up a lot of time. Like if you're already pressed for time ramping up to a heavy single before you back off with the rep work. Um, you know, just very likely an additional five, ten fifteen minutes maybe depending how heavy you're going. So again like the the jump end of things is just easy. You walk in there, you do a few and then you do work. It's very

then something that can happen um is that the rest periods need to get longer. Yeah. And um one of the unfortunate things about the PAP effect is that it only lasts uh probably uh sort of four or five minutes. So if we are kind of starting to push that rest period up to the top end of that five minutes, um, because of the high number of reps and the large number of sets, then I would imagine that would be one of the few scenarios where I would actually have a PAP effect.

uh jump before I did another uh set of the same exercise. So normally

And they've done and they're they're they're kind of doing, I don't know, five sets of four and towards the end of that batch of sets I would imagine that the rest periods are gonna need to probably start creeping up. Um Certainly were in my case. Uh it just as an interesting point. So I w I did the whole Hepburn thing, eight by two rising to three. Um And um I was probably flat on my back between the sets. Uh absolutely

Some people I think just have that metabolic response to I think it comes down to the ratio between the muscle mass and the cardiovascular system. So it's not about how good your cardiovascular system is. It's how much muscle mass you have relative to what your cardiovascular system is capable of doing. I think that's the issue.

breathing rate and all the rest of it. So ultimately I think it's um yeah. Coming back to what point I was making, I was just saying that as the rest periods get longer because of those scenarios, you might find that a PAP effect vertical jump prior to doing another set is an interesting thing to do uh because it just kind of refreshes that um pap uh process uh which you wouldn't have needed to do uh normally because you'd be uh doing set

uh sufficiently close together. But when you're not doing that, you might want to drop one of those uh in. I think it's an interesting it's but the only occasion I would ever see that happening.

Cool. Okay. So um we've been running on a while, but can you give us and we've got plenty more episodes to talk about powerlifting, so we don't need to do all of these today, but can you give us some really silly s sort of uh examples of powerlifting um kind of practice that you've seen regarding maybe sets and reps and things like that.

Seen some very wonky protocols where people will do uh ascending Reps as well, like they start low and they go high. Um, for pile lifting, I've seen ascending weights within a set. Um, which is doesn't make any sense to me. I think I said any one of those. Wow. But essentially you have people on either side of the bar and you're doing singles, but you're just throwing a plate on each time until you get to a very, very heavy rep.

I don't see the point in that at all. You know, you start at three fifteen and you had to play it each time up to you know, six or seven hundred. Just just do a normal set. Um, one it's not gonna require wasting two people's time.

you know, someone might be adapting very quickly to a program versus someone adapting slow. And if you have a built in rate of progression, it's just a very easy way to have someone run out. and just hit a wall very fast and then you're you're kinda stuck with this specific model. You know, well whoa what do I do now? I just start a little later and recycle it again. And if it didn't work great the first time, it's probably not gonna work great the second time.

So yeah, I would probably stay away from those. You gotta you really need a a very reactive programming style for good powerlifting programming. It just can't be cookie cutter, it can't be this session needs to be this, the next session needs to be that.'Cause then when that doesn't happen due to to fatigue in the gym, outside the gym.

You're just like you know, you're like, All right, where do I go from here? Um, the plan was this cookie cutter plan I had and then now I don't have anywhere to go.

Accessories for powerlifting and then we'll see where it goes. Maybe there's a a third episode in there somewhere. Fantastic. Okay, so thanks everyone for joining us. We will be back next week with another episode about powerlifting.