25 Potentiation

And we're going to talk about potentiation today. So potentiation are sometimes called priming. Um, I guess there's other uh terms for it as well. Basically things that we do in order to create positive um improvement, immediate positive improvements in exercise performance, uh, often in the context of a strength training workout, but sometimes also in the context of athletic competitions.

So um we're going to talk about potentiation this time. I'm going to hopefully follow it up in a subsequent episode talking about contrast training because that's where potentiation is most often used. Basically contrast involves uh doing one type of exercise and then uh pairing it with another type of exercise to try and get benefits from um the first type of exercise on the second type. But potentiation uh essentially has quite a long and fairly complicated history.

in the exercise science literature. I'm just gonna give a very quick pen portrait and then um Rob and I will talk about some of the ways in which he's using potentiation mechanisms at the moment, just uh kind of naturally in the course of the programmes that he's writing. And then we'll talk a bit about um ways that I've perhaps used potentiation mechanisms in the past that uh might be different.

Um, about maybe uh five years ago or so, maybe a little bit more, uh time tends to kind of uh stretch a little bit as you get older and you start to lose track of how many years are passing. But uh a few years ago uh there was a really important review paper published and it made the very important observation that uh the PAP effect, the post activation potentiation effect, um

didn't really cover all instances of potentiation. And therefore what we've got then is potentiation as like an umbrella term. And then under that you've got PAP effects and uh there was a proposed PAPE effect, post-activation performance enhancement effect.

uh and those two have different time courses. And then arguably there's a bunch of other potentiation effects that fall outside of those two time courses as well. So essentially there's a really interesting history going on here in terms of it starting out as a relatively uh kind of singular idea and it kind of now fragmenting into a bunch of different concepts, all under the same heading, but essentially different time courses. So

What is potentiation? Well potentiation basically is the exact opposite of fatigue. So when we say fatigue, fatigue is a temporary and reversible reduction in exercise performance as a result of a previous bout of exercise. Um The uh potentiation effect is the exact exact opposite. So it's a temporary increase rather than a temporary reduction in exercise performance as a result of a previous power to exercise.

So this is something I talked about before, but basically if you have temporary increases or decreases in exercise performance that are not related to previous bouts of exercise, technically we shouldn't really call them fatigue. Now, in the context of the fatigue literature, We do call them fatigue, so like if you do a cognitive task, like a street test, um, then you can get a reduction in exercise performance and it is caused by the same things that um exercise itself.

um, you know, produces uh superspinal CNFT. The same s superspinal CNST can be created by a mental uh cognitive fatigue test as it can be by a previous battery exercise. So we tend to group those kind of things into that definition of fatigue. Shouldn't really, but we do. The same thing applies to potentiation.

If I do a potenti a potentiating about exercise, say I do an isometric or a high velocity repetition, and it produces a temporary increase in exercise performance immediately afterwards, that's a potentiation effect, because I've temporarily increased exercise performance.

as a result of a previous bow to exercise. We call that the conditioning contraction, the thing that creates that potentiating effect. If, however, I were to create it with a motivational technique, if I were to shout encouragement at somebody just as they're about to lift,

and that produced an improvement in performance, you might say, Oh, well that's a potentiating effect. Well, technically it's not, because I haven't done it with a bout of exercise, I've done it with a motivational psychological technique. Is it working through the same mechanism? Well, not actually in this case it's not, no.

So there's some really interesting kind of differences there in terms of when you're looking at uh fatigue and potentiation being outcomes that are essentially opposite directions from one another, sometimes you can have a scenario where

um an exercise bout or a a like a motivational or psychological technique might produce the same effect, but they might not actually be working in the same way. So Anyway, potentiation essentially is a effect where we temporarily improve exercise performance by using a previous bout of exercise, which we call the conditioning contraction.

Coming back to the PAP and Pape effects, b both of these operate inside a single workout. The PAP effect is a very well described physiological phenomenon that involves moving

uh essentially moving myosins closer to actin. So uh there's a process that and that happens in response to the muscle fiber being activated, probably calcium ion mediated like pretty much everything else inside a muscle fiber. And so basically what you get is a movement of the myosin closer to actin through the phosphosphorylation of myosin regulatory light chains.

That lasts for somewhere maybe two to five minutes, and in that period of time your myosins are closer to actin and therefore you're going to get an increase in mechanical tension of the fiber across the entire force velocity spectrum. So basically if you activate the fiber, you should get for the next two to five minutes approximately um

you should get a temporary increase in the mechanical tension that fiber can produce across all velocities, and that will actually therefore allow you to reach slightly higher velocities as well. So it it basically is completely

uh kind of independent of what you then do. You could you could do a high velocity uh repetition, um activate all the fibers because of obviously the fibre activation is the key factor here. The number of fibers you activate is going to determine the overall muscle potentiation effect. Because you've got to get as many fibers experiencing that activation or that calcium ion uh kind of uh influx.

in order to create the effect. And then basically you could then wait 30 seconds a minute and you could do another high velocity repetition. And you should basically see the potentiation effect. Now, I often say to people when they're doing uh multiple counter movement jumps the second jump or maybe even their third jump will be the highest from the starting point of their kind of attempts. So generally speaking, most people will not hit their best counter movement jump height.

on the first uh attempt of a set of three attempts. Most people will hit it on the second or the third. And that's most likely the PAP effect in action in that scenario. So basically uh you can kind of get uh Pap Effect from pretty much anything uh, you know, that activates the fiber and it doesn't really need to be a long duration. Some people have started to say things like, Oh no, you can't get Pap Effects from high velocity repetitions because you have to do

you know, it has to be calcium out accumulation for a reasonable duration of time, like a, you know, four or five second heavy strength training repetition. I'm like, no, we literally got two studies, one in uh jumping, one in throwing. uh that show you that you literally just need to do a single high velocity rep and it will give you a post-activation potentiation PAP effect.

on a heavy strength training exercise. So you don't uh you don't need to do uh kind of the the kind of the heavy stuff to make that particular mechanism work. So that's the PAP effect.

The paper effect is pretty mysterious. We don't have the same documentation on the mechanisms. It lasts kind of uh, you know, a off the end of the five minutes. Most people kind of record it in the eight to fifteen minute kind of period of time. And really it's gonna be a bunch of other stuff that we haven't really managed to uh pin down yet. Now

Some people have argued that maybe there's a central nervous system mechanism there. I don't agree. I think there's some pretty nice data showing that you've got superspinal CNST even when those PAPE effects or PAP or PAPE effects are actually present. So I think ultimately uh

there isn't really a strong rationale for there being a uh potentiation effect on the central nervous system level in that kind of immediate post conditioning tra uh contraction space of zero to fifteen minutes post uh you know kind of uh conditioning contraction.

But yeah, the paper effect, pretty mysterious at the moment. We don't really know what's going on. But as I say, we have got data showing that you can create it even uh when you are experiencing superspinal CNSD as indicated by reduction in voluntary activation. And that just gives me the opportunity to mention uh something else, which is that

Remember that potentiation and fatigue are um the net output that we measure. So they're always the outcome, the performance outcome. And that could be net of a potentiation mechanism, net of a fatigue mechanism. So you can have a fatigue mechanism present and a potentiation mechanism present.

And whichever one is bigger will give you whether you are genuinely potentiated or fatigued, but they're both present at the same time. So I could have a little bit of CNS fatigue, but a big potentiation effect inside the muscle fibers because of the PAP effect.

And I could get an improvement in performance. That's probably what's happening in the counter movement jumps that I described a minute ago. Uh conversely, I could do the opposite. I could create a bunch of fatigue, a little potentiation effect.

and I'm gonna be fatigued, as in my exercise points is gonna go down, but technically I've also got potentiation effect that I can't see because it's obscured by the magnitude of the fatigue that I'm experiencing. So you have to remember always that fatigue and potentiation are um outcomes that are net of the other one, the fatigue or the potential. So um basically that is what's happening inside a kind of a single workout. You've got the PAP and Pape Effect.

We've also, and as I say, pretty much no sign of any kind of neural um kind of benefits there. I think where you do see uh neural changes is if you get a bunch of uh like relatively untrained people and you put them through a series of high

effort but low fatigue contraction types. Say like you get them to do isometrics for say five seconds with maximum effort and then you give them a minute or two and then you ask them to do another one, you're gonna see potentiation effects that are neural because they're not actually potentiation, they're actually adaptions. So one of my favorite, favorite studies is a series of five isometric contractions with like I think it's three minutes rest between them.

Actually I think I sent it to you recently, Rob. Um there's a really cool study uh where basically it literally goes sort of jumps up in voluntary activation over the series of like five repetitions. Untrained people doing isometrics with decent rest periods, they see these massive what look like potentiation effects. They're not, they're actually adaptions. It's motin at Kuman adapting in real time, which is fantastic.

But we talked about that right at the very beginning of this series of um posc podcast episodes when we talked about ma maximum strength and motionit recruitment increases. But yeah, so I think you could argue if you were kind of so inclined that you're getting a a potentiation effect there, but I don't agree that that is what it is. I think that is adaptive. And the same thing with coordination.

uh mechanisms that are neural in nature, even though the vast majority of the fitness industry will tell you that you're warming up the central nervous system, that you're doing other things like that. It's just not really what's happening. So those are the things that have been studied in the context of potentiation. It's the PAP effect and the paper effect.

Again, I c I said that the history of uh potentiation is interesting exercise because for some reason the concept of warm ups gets completely ignored when people are talking about these things. So the reality is that warm up would actually give you a potentiation effect as well. And warm ups basically you increase the temperature of the muscle.

Increase the temperature of the muscle and that actually will give you an increase in the uh rate of cycling of your actin myosin cross bridges. And that basically does pretty much the same thing as a increase in the phosph as in the uh PAP effect, which is the phosphorylation of myosin regulatory light change, moving uh meosin closetactin, it'll give you a pr pretty much a faster rate of cross bridge formations.

and increase in force production across the whole force velocity profile. What it probably won't do, in my opinion, and I don't think there is a good study on this yet, but what it probably won't do is increase the number of reps to failure. And I I think the reason it won't do that is because basically what you'll get is a greater um

uh sort of formation of metabolite related fatigue, because when you form cross bridges more quickly, you will actually form metabolites more quickly as well. So yes, you'll get greater instantaneous force, but I don't think you'll get greater number of reps to failure um, you know, i i for the same uh you know, using the same technique.

So basically a warm-up will do the same thing. Now what do we know about warm-ups? Very briefly, you kind of have to do 15 to 20 minutes of low intensity cardio for the muscle that you want to do, or you could just sit in a warm bath of water, or you could use one of those warming kind of uh blankets that they use.

Um anything will do. I mean literally we are literally just warming up the temperature of the muscle. Now we can talk maybe uh other times about the fact that that probably also has um muscle strain injury preventative effects. So it's definitely worth considering doing if you are um, you know, kind of worried about that in the context of an athletic situation. Um but it's not the same thing as doing a couple of what we call warm-up

sets before a strength training exercise. That is not the same thing. Even though the label is the same, this is one of those things where words uh need to be uh analysed very carefully. You can't just call something a warm up and it produce a warming up effect. It actually has to sound mad, but actually we have to say this because some people think so so

concretely in terms of words, you know, having power and it's like, well, no, they don't. They're describing a concept. And if it's not describing the concept correctly, then it's not gonna do the thing. y you you have to actually do the kind of uh kind of low intensity cardio with the muscle that you actually want to warm up. Or as I say, you can warm it up by putting a blanket on it with a warming facility.

or, you know, sitting in some warm water or something like that. And it will do the same thing. Um that will give you the potentiating effect of the accelerated cross bridge formations. And it'll also give you a little bit of a reduced

injury uh kind of risk uh from a muscle strain injury point of view. So it's definitely worth considering. A warm up set from a strength training perspective doesn't do the same thing. It's not warming the muscle up. That won't do that. Um what purpose it serves is a separate question. Um

But ultimately that's why I've started recommending people talk about warm up reps rather than warm up sets because uh really what we're looking for is the feel and the comfort with the weight and the exercise that we're doing rather than anything else. But that's a separate argument.

Okay. So we've talked about PAP and PAPE effects. Uh we've talked about Warm Effect. All that's going on inside a single um kind of workout. Um very, very briefly I'm just going to then describe two additional potentiations just so we've got completeness inside this episode. Um

Basically you also see within day potentiation effects. If you do a little bit of exercise in the morning, you'll generally get potentiation in the afternoon. That seems to be because of a hormonal effect, testosterone increase. And potentially that therefore will increase motivate accruement by increasing motivation. So um that is a really, really interesting one. So if people are uh you know, kind of uh be uh working as professional athletes, uh I'd definitely be looking at that as a strategy.

most of the rest of us who have uh you know kind of schedules that we can't really kind of work around quite so easily, uh probably aren't going to find that beneficial. But that's that's in there as a as a potentiation mechanism.

And then finally, the most mysterious of them all, there is a delayed potentiation effect, which I'm fascinated by. I know there's people still working on it. I don't really know where it's going at the moment. But there is a potentiation effect that lasts kind of about forty eight hours.

if you do something like a power training kind of workout and leave it forty eight hours, come back and retest, generally there's an improvement. Now, this is another one of those areas where, you know, if you were to show me that sort of uh literature and and it had all been done in

uh untrained people, then I would be like, no, no, no, no, that's not potentiation, that's adaptation. That's just kind of recruitment and coordination appearance. But there are studies in highly trained track and field athletes that will give you the same output. So there is a potentiation happening there. I don't know what it is.

If anybody has any uh new information on that or is working on that as a PhD or anything, um please do tell me, you know, what direction you're going in and why you think there are some interesting things happening there because I'd be fascinated to know, you know, what uh really is going on there and I haven't figured it out yet.

Potentiation mechanisms, as we say, uh there's a couple of interesting things going on during the workout. You've got the warm up itself with is which is a temperature increase, you've got a PEP effect, and you've got a PAPE effect.

Um the reason I separate those out completely, I know that some people have argued that paper effects could be temperature increases. I don't agree, because if you look at the things that give you the greatest paper effects, they are not warming the muscle up. They're just a couple of repetitions of a heavy load. So I think there's something definitely different going on there.

I also don't agree that it's recruitment related or coordination related'cause as I say, I think um generally speaking those things are getting worse, not better, even though you've got the Pape and Pampa Effects being displayed. Cool.

Okay. So hopefully that is enough physiology um relating to potentiations. So let's talk about practicalities. So Rob, loads of things I want to ask you here. Um Let's start with the most uh simple question of all, uh or most relevant question of all, which is that um When you're programming strength training workouts, how are you making use of the pap and paper effect to begin with? And then I'll separately af after this I'll ask you about the warm ups. But

Um, how are you currently making use of the PAP and paper effects? And obviously the answer to this could be, well, it's baked into the way that strength training works and I'd accept that, but um just kind of give me a give me a kind of a pen portrait to what you're doing at the moment.

Um, if it's a more complex exercise, like you mentioned, something like a squat, a deadlift and things like that, um some singles just ramping up to get time to get comfortable with the movement, especially with the squat with the weight on your back, things like that.

But we've talked about it a little bit before, um, machine exercises and stuff like that. I really like just like a warm-up rep um before you hop into the set there. I think where, you know, people tend to go wrong is thinking you need like an over warm up. style of potentiating single and that you're not getting like a good effect if you don't do something a bit heavier than your work set and then back off. But um, you know, like you just described.

Like I just said, it can be something at least, you know, reasonably close and high effort compared to the work set. And then you just go right in. Um, besides those, really like max effort jumps, another one of the easiest ones. Um max effort, you know, vertical jump for squat or deadlift, even like a broad jump, um kind of depends on what the the person needs.

um, you know, otherwise for their sport in that. But I'll do max effort jumps, I'll do max effort throws, all those high velocity things. Um, just a couple of reps and like you did uh describe there, usually I'm noticing people, yeah. Second, third, maybe even fourth jump, they're hitting uh peak height. Generally, I'll instruct people to do anywhere from like

three to five jumps just to make sure I give them time to like reach that peak height, peak speed and that. Um those work really, really nicely, super easy. Take no time at all and just rest, you know, just enough between the reps.

before the deadlift. Um but yeah, so all that stuff works really nicely and it tends to make people, uh like you mentioned, much more comfortable with the lift afterwards versus just hopping in cold.

uh conditioning contraction I think is really really cool. And incidentally that's the only scenario that I've ever really programmed specific potentiation conditioning contractions between sets. So as you say Yeah. So as you say, uh if you're kind of programming for an athlete, you're generally gonna be giving them one or two sets for most of the exercises. Um you're gonna do that warm up rep.

which is uh uh or the last warm up wrap. I generally do say two or three warm up reps uh of different loads. I start with'cause I uh you know, I start with something that's ridiculously light to make sure that I haven't kind of accidentally you know, kind of lost lost anything functional during the e during the the night before. And I kind of like come to the exercise, I kind of make sure that my body still works properly, which you have to do when you get to this age.

And you kind of do your repetition and then you do another one a bit higher and then you do your kind of I do my third one which is close to my uh kind of work weight. And I generally push pretty hard on that to make sure I'm getting a PAP effect.

Uh'cause as I said, it's reliant on the number of fibers you're activating is gonna be the size of the paper fate you you're gonna get. You wanna get the most fibers experiencing that phenomenon. Um and that pretty much gives me my uh conditioning contraction for that next for that first set. But if I'm doing a second set, generally in a bodybuilding context, I'm going to be probably doing that second set inside the PAP effect zone, so I'm not too worried.

In athletic situations you might not be, um, especially if you're doing kind of as you say, like a free weight back squat or something like that. And that's when it's brilliant to kind of just drop in that jump, um, or in the case of bench press, you could drop uh throw in a medicine ball throw or fly or push up or something like that.

between sets. And that's the pretty much the only scenario I'm going to do something that looks like contrast training. It's going to have a uh kind of that that conditioning contraction between strength training sets. And that sounds pretty much like what you're doing as well.

pretty quick rest between those and then if I need to rest, you know, longer before the work set, I might throw in a jump before the work set. But it's super quick, you know, I don't uh I don't tend to do extended warm-ups. But one thing I did wanna mention, you made me think of

Um, a lot of times I have people who feel like they perform better on their their second work set of an exercise. And I've seen other people mention this, but really, you know, the likely candidate for that is just a potentiation effect. If you do your warm-up rep. And, you know, maybe at least the way I'm thinking about it, you're not really in the zone. You don't really give enough effort and activate enough fibers. And then you do a work set, it's reasonably hard.

the second one is even better. Um, you know, some people would obviously think that the second one would always be worse'cause of fatigue. But if you didn't push all the way to failure on that first set and you activated a lot of fibers, you probably just got a potentiation effect for that second set and that could be why it's better. Um because I'll notice clients.

Uh I actually have quite a few older clients who their second set is a lot of times the better one of the two. I don't know if maybe, you know, that's what's going on. They just don't really get um a good potentiation effect on the the warm-up rep or something there. Um, you know, some of them are just It's also something like 6 a.m. Maybe there's not quite a new it until the uh the second set there. But could just be a potentiation thing.

Um, I found a little bit of repeat about effect material in the elderly, which is different from how it works in um kind of younger populations. Um so I am I am keeping my eyes open for these kind of anecdotes about how elderly people experience strength training differently because I'm definitely wanting to to continue um growing that uh part of the FAQ. So uh I shall definitely uh file that in my brain for

future analysis. I think it's an interesting one. Anyway, so yeah, okay. So You've described how you're you're kind of taking um uh making use of the PAP effect and just kind of making sure to uh uh get it back again if it's lost between uh kind of sets with longer rest periods. Um I'm guessing you don't really spend a lot of time thinking about the paper fact'cause there's very little kind of um mechanistic information behind it.

Um, when you are or how you're managing that warm up process,'cause practically it's really difficult, especially when you're working with clients in person, to kind of get that that warm-up uh to work. So can you just uh go through that again for us?

And I'll hop in there and I will just blast the hot water for 15, 20 minutes. And then when I get out, I I feel awesome. So if I'm trying to get the temperature increase for myself rather than hop on a bike, I'll do that. Um but I I just thought that was pretty funny. Um I have had actually people that I've done consults within that, I'm like, you c you can do that. You can blast the, you know, heck out of the heat in your car. You can hop on in hot water. You can do things like that.

But the the most common one is I'll just have people, if they have a little time before the session, they want to come in early, just hop on, you know, a a bike that they're using all four limbs and just do like fifteen to twenty minutes. of just some uh easy cardio. Not, you know, going crazy high effort or anything, but just enough that they're definitely getting that um temperature increase. And like you said, uh

Warm up reps, a lot of people do come to me thinking that if they do a set of like ten or twelve instead of like a low rep warmup, that that is gonna get, you know, blood flow and temperature increase. So I I am always educating them on the fact that that is not the case. You got to do the temperature based things. So if you have a you know, if you have personal training clients,

and athletes and you wanna have them come in a little bit early, hop on the bike and do something like that. Um just make sure they're, like you said, using the muscles that are gonna be involved in the lift in the exercise. Um Probably the easiest way to do it. I'm not gonna have people do it in the session and just stand next to them. You know, people are paying for the time. I'm not gonna charge them fifteen minutes out of the hour to just hop on a bike and sit there.

And negative because it's creating a fatigue. So what people need to understand is that you've got to kind of uh uh think about warming up as a as a as a low intensity cardio thing and then pairing that with a potentiating rep. And those two things are what are gonna give you the the the kind of uh positive outputs that you're looking for. Um, this kind of very, very, very common traditional idea of doing a bunch of um moderate load or light load

Uh sets um with you know high repetitions has just got to go. It's just not doing Positive at all. But but it's so popular. Um you know Okay, cool. So um I think that's very very interesting. Like um as you say, recommending um the kind of fifteen minute or so warm up.

um to people who are either working remotely or people who want to come in um, you know, before the session starts and do that. I think that's very, very cool. I have actually seen that done in person. I have seen coaches, uh, when I've been going to commercial gyms, I have seen coaches

uh wave across the room at one of their clients who's arrived fifteen, twenty minutes early, uh who goes across to the uh kind of uh elliptical, spends fifteen, twenty minutes and then on the hour when the coach is ready to start the next session, they pick up and start that. So I think that does happen and I think that's very cool.

uh that it does and I would encourage people to adopt that. I think it's definitely the right uh strategy. So cool. Okay, so uh that is one sweet so you've described to us how you're making use of the potentiation effect, the post activation potentiation effect.

and you've described to us how you're using uh temperature uh increasing warm ups and one of your strategies obviously is slightly okay I actually kind of quite grateful that I I I live generally live in warm countries where I can walk from my flat to the Uh and of course

So can you just describe uh kind of um you know, some of those uh techniques that you're using so that people are aware that there is a greater variety'cause you've y obviously you've got your way of doing things in terms of creating potentiation effects. But can you just give a a quick outline of the isometrics uh that you're doing to start with and then we Excuse me.

And yeah, all those, you know, have the the interesting effect of increasing recruitment over time. Um, but also, yeah, like you said, they're gonna give a potentiating effect. So if you want to do those instead of um just like a single high velocity rep or a single high effort rep.

um, you know, probably worth using for the recruitment increases. So yeah, really, really like those. And, you know, a lot of times I notice at least if I do them, you know, for example on the peck fly and that first set feels Awesome. Just, you know, whether that's a mental thing, whatever it is, first set feels very smooth. Um, in terms of like squatting and that, if I do an ISO pre squat, generally if I'm, you know, maybe a little stiff knees, achy, things like that.

feels great on the squad afterwards. So I do, I really, really like those actually. The isometrics, probably one of my my favorites and my most consistently programmed uh things that I use.

Max effort, uh again, wait a minute and then do your kind of work set, it's gonna give you that potentiation effect uh under the banner of the post actuation uh potentiation effect, PAP effect. Um, probably give you a performance enhancement. Effect as well, paper effect, but who knows.

Yeah. Um the the thing is though, as you uh reiterated there, you're also gonna get an adaption from that. You're gonna get a pretty cool improvement in mode tuning recruitment as an adaption as long as you've got the capacity to do that. Um, and I think that it probably is gonna be slightly more reliable to get that from a isolated uh kind of s sort of single joint isometric than you're gonna get from a high velocity movement that is a whole body. So this is why I kinda say to people, yeah.

you know, y you can get motion equipment increases from jumps and throws and things like that and especially with beginners you're gonna do that. But the as you get further down the line in the athletic scenario, the ability to create recruitment increases from those big whole body movements is gonna get smaller and smaller and smaller.

And you are gonna have to start thinking about um kind of single joint stuff and that is gonna naturally lead you to isometrics because um high velocities with single joint it's just not a good combination.

And my answer there was that I'd much rather do something more isolated where you can just really focus on whatever muscle you want to increase through recruitment and since the increases will be transferable and muscle specific.

you know, the more things you have working at a time, the less you're recruiting in any one of those things. So making it much, much more targeted versus, you know, like a bench against pins or an overhead press against pins, which historically I've seen people Uh used quite a bit actually.

And you identify they've got a sticking point in one particular location. And so yeah, you go down the route to saying, Okay, we're gonna do some kind of isometric just below the sticking point, which is a classic way of trying to make progress in that kind of situation. Okay, fine. Um and the exact adaptions that are happening in that scenario I think are a little bit difficult to pin down.

But what I think you're gonna find is that y you probably will make progress on that particular uh kind of uh sticking point. But what will happen is you'll just end up generating a sticking point somewhere else. And then you're gonna go through the same process and do the same thing again. Okay. But if you go down the route of saying, Well, okay, um

If we target the muscle for recruitment improvements, which we can do by isolating and reducing the muscle mass and all that kind of thing, then we're going to get a more kind of transferable adaption. And what you can probably then do is just keep hammering away at that. And it should actually carry you through a bunch of different positions of sticking points, um, kind of

uh irrespective of where they happen to be. Now if they move a lot, then you're probably going to start thinking about different muscle groups that you might need to include or different muscle regions or what have you, then that will start to change. But I think the flexibility of this uh recruitment increase is actually a little bit bigger than the joint angle specific targeting of the

hesitant to ask you if you've seen any um horrible examples of people using potentiations because the list could be very, very long. But can you just kind of give us a quick pen portrait of, you know, kind of the ideas and concepts that you're seeing around uh potentiations that are definitely not valid at the moment in the industries.

um, mention a lot of times, like you said, that it's a a nervous system phenomenon. You're ramping up the nervous system. And that's another reason people tend to believe in the very heavy load singles and that that you need to do like a an over warm-up and stuff like that.

And I you know, I said before, it's not like that's bad. You can use an overwarm up as long as it's not fatiguing, it's fine. But I think the reason people tend to think that that would work is not correct. And then using things like certain contrast ideas and that. Um, they get pretty wacky pretty quick.

a temporary improvement in exercise performance as a result of a previous bad to exercise. So if you want to justify, if somebody wants to argue that the CNS is experiencing a transitory increase in recruitment or a transitory increase in co in coordination capacity, I am waiting for them to send me that data'cause honestly, what I think they're looking at either is a genuine peripheral potentiation effect that they are as uh attributing to CNS and it's not, or they're looking at an adaption.

in the CNS. So generally speaking, if the CNS figures out a way to do something better, it's gonna do that and it's gonna keep it forever. It's not going to do it temporarily. You're not going to get the CNS to increase. Okay, fine. You can do it motivationally. You can increase someone's maximum tolerable protection of effort. Fine. Yeah, you can do that. Um but that's not a potentiation effect because it's not done by exercise.

So um if we I I think that if you can find an exercise that that increases like the recruitment level or the coordination level in the subsequent exercise repetition. So for example,

Again, untrained person and you ask them to do a maximum effort counter moving jump after warming them up correctly, um get them to a maximum effort counter moving jump, their next counter movement jump, I guarantee you, will have higher recruitment and higher coordination. It just will. And you could say, Well, that's potentiation like no it's not.

'Cause they're gonna keep those benefits forever. You know, it's not gonna go away. So I think this is the thing that people kind of um misunderstand, is that if the CNS develops the ability to do something better, it's gonna pretty much keep that forever and it's not gonna lose it. So it's not potentiation fact, it's an adaptation.

So I think really what we're seeing here is that for me, when I look at it, look at the industry, the single biggest mistake is people thinking that you can create potentiations through the CNS. Um

And really those, I mean, obviously a heavy light method, a pre-exhaust, a post-exhaust, all those things are gonna give you more growth or more strength increase than just a normal straight set. They're definitely gonna give you less, um, you know, in my opinion. Uh but yeah, so you see those a lot and I just don't I don't really think those things have any kind of value anymore. I mean, obviously I'm not using them myself.

in that off season when they use those kind of I guess advanced techniques they would call them. Yeah and really you're just tiring yourself out, you're getting fiber type shifting, making you slower. You're not getting any more growth than you would be with just normal straight sets.

and you're just the fatigue carrying over into your athletic movements in your athletic training sessions is gonna be a a very big net negative. Um so yeah, if you you're trying to focus in off season on using all these kinds of things I d obviously don't agree with it and don't see the value in that at all. And I see it over and over and over. And I just you know, I don't know why it's still hanging around so much.

next week, uh following on from discussing how potentiation works um this time. Um cool. So uh Steve it there. Um we will be back. Definitely be back next week uh with a um another episode.