26 Contrast training

most commonly discussed in the context of single workouts, so the PAP effect, post-activation potentiation effect, and the PAPE effect, post-activation performance enhancement effect. We also covered a little bit about the potentiation models that refer to post workout uh kind of potentiation.

Um, which don't really have names, but they're generally referred to as delayed potentiation. And there's a delayed one that works within a day and there's a delayed model that refers to a couple of days uh of um time before the potentiation is revealed. So potentiation obviously is a temporary increase in exercise performance caused by previous bout of exercise. You can go back to that previous podcast and listen to that if you want a full breakdown of exactly what it is and how it works.

But today we're going to talk about contrast training because it uses the concept of potentiation. So the idea that we can do one small bat of exercise, whether it's a heavy strength training um kind of set or a high velocity uh kind of set.

And that will then potentiate have a positive effect on the subsequent set of a different type of exercise. So what's really important though is that we differentiate between the things that are creating stimuli for adaptations and simple um outputs in terms of say force and power and speed and that kind of thing. Because what we're interested in when we're trying to trigger an adaptation is have we got a higher level of the thing that is actually going to contribute to an improvement in the

of um adaptation that we're seeking. So for example, if you are seeking improvements in um motor accrument or improvements in rate coding or something like that, so they're neural kind of factors. And you primarily create potentiations that are happening at the peripheral level. So you're able to say create a potentiation effect that produces an improvement in local um muscular performance.

system fatigue happening at the same time. Then what you'll get is a reduction in the neural factors that are the things that would then stimulate your neural adaption at the same time as your peripheral factors are actually compensating for that in terms of, say, force or power or speed or whatever. So what you'll see is you'll actually end up with a slightly higher level of

say force, power, or speed or whatever, and you're looking at that going, Hey, that's fantastic. I'm I'm I'm gonna get the the better output from this workout than I thought I was gonna get without this method that I'm using. But the reality is you're not gonna get the adaptions that you're interested in on the neural side because you do have this

uh kind of superspinal central nervous system fatigue that is suppressing the neural output that would actually trigger the adaption you're getting. So this is really, really important'cause this fundamentally is the difference in frameworks between um

a physiology based or a science based model and an evidence based model. Because the evidence based models tend to chase outputs like force, power, speed, that kind of thing. So and obviously the physiology side tends to say, well, what is the actual underpinning

uh kind of physiological reality. So do I have a high level of recruitment? Do a high level of do I have a high level of rate coding? Uh what what is it that I'm trying to actually stimulate with those things? So generally speaking, What we're gonna find is that when we start to deconstruct

the way that potentiation works, which we did last time, we can now apply that deconstruction to um contrast training. We can start to see whether we're going to see better adaptations in terms of say neural factors or peripheral factors. or whether all we're doing really is creating, um, you know, temporary increases in, say, force or power or speed or that kind of thing. So ultimately

Whenever we're talking about contrast training, what we've got to do is look at the potentiation mechanisms. And of course, because contrast training is working within a workout, we're primarily going to be looking at the path. um post activation potentiation and PAPE post activation performance enhancement effects. And just to recap, um those do do tend to last slightly different periods of time. So generally speaking the PAP effect lasts for say maybe two to five minutes.

and the paper effect probably lasts more sort of between eight and fifteen minutes. Um, generally speaking, uh we're not gonna see paper effects occurring much before that. We're probably gonna see paper effects um You know, primarily being most obvious in the first kind of minute or two post uh what we call conditioning contraction. So the most famous examples.

of PAP effects tend to be with high velocity, um, unfatiguing contractions. So if you do a uh for example, a vertical jump or a medicine ball throw or something, and then do either a squat or a bench press, You're going to see a PAP effect around about the one minute mark when you do that uh kind of uh strength test uh after your high velocity repetition. In contrast,

if you're kind of doing sort of a um heavy strength training sort of rep or two reps and then you're waiting maybe sort of ten minutes and then you're getting a potentiation effect and a vertical jump or something like that, that would be a classic example of a paper effect rather than a pap effect. So

generally sp and I'm not saying that you can't get PAP effects from heavy strength training, you can. They're just a lot harder to see because of course fatigue is doing the exact opposite of the potentiation that we're looking for. So generally speaking, we're gonna see

clearer PAP effects from high velocity work and we're going to see clearer paper effects or m more common paper effects from the heavy strength training side of things. That just generally tends to be the way that literature works.

Cool. So that was a very quick intro, because I'm not really planning on talking through the entire potentiation physiology again, just referencing the fact that Uh, when we're looking at the um benefits of potentiation, we're always looking to say, what is the uh physiological change that has occurred and does that then benefit me in terms of the adaptation that I'm seeking?

Uh, because just improving forced power speed or that kind of thing isn't necessarily going to do it for me. What I'm looking for is the actual underpinning physiology, whether I have increased recruitment to stimulate a greater improvement in recruitment, Have I increased mechanical tension at the fiber level? That potentially could give me some more hypertrophy. What am I actually doing that is going to benefit me in terms of the uh adaption that I'm seeking? So

Having done that, I'm gonna hand over to Rob and unlike uh in most podcasts, when I ask Rob to tell us about how he's using a particular technique, we're not gonna start there because the reality is that uh generally speaking neither of us really program contrast training very much at all.

So I'm actually just gonna ask Rob to talk through what he's seen in terms of uh the way that contrast training is used in the SNC community at the moment. And obviously this is just Rob's perspective. Um, you know, I I don't really have much perspective because I don't spend a lot of time tracking what

uh the S and C community is doing. But uh we're gonna start there and then we'll kind of start deconstructing whether that works for the purposes that it's intended to do. So Rob, tell us a little bit about what you're seeing at the moment in terms of how people are using contrast training and the different types of contrast training that you're seeing.

Um, you know, like a back squat paired with something low load, high velocity, a lot of people would use um it could be a jump squat or just a regular unloaded vertical jump. And then the second one is gonna be like a classic um French contrast. And for anyone that doesn't know what a French contrast is, it's usually four exercises sequenced. So you start with a heavy strength exercise and then you do a plyometric exercise.

Um, and then you do or sorry, and then you do like a moderate, yeah, you do a ply metric, then you do a moderate load power exercise, and then an assisted ply metric. So it's always in that same sequence. four exercises back to back. Um, those are the two main ones. There's a few others that like people bounce around, but don't really have to get too into them. They don't even really count as contrast training. They're more ideas about sequencing exercises.

through a training session. Um so those will be the two ones that people program. And, you know, with um the regular contrast training. I I see a lot of times people will do uh the heavy strength movement purposely with a a slower eccentric and that as well. Um you know, I'll see like a four count, five county centric. Um, you know, I guess they go with that really

slow and heavy, quote unquote, and then pair that with the the very fast movement. Um and I do see the same thing with the French contrast. Sometimes people will do that first heavy strength training exercise with like a deliberately slow eccentric and then um you know everything else after is kind of standard but i mean in either case i think doing a deliberately slower eccentric is only gonna make those things worse

Um, and I don't think it's gonna be doing very much at all regardless. So if you wanna pick those apart a little bit.

you know, which are great exercises for any athletic program. You know, and, you know, if we were programming for uh you know, whether it be basketball or um, you know, kind of uh m many other team sports as well, uh volleyball maybe, we probably have um, you know, that

uh those two exercises in the in the strength training uh kind of workout that we'd be planning. So th but the point here is that we're pairing them. So we're doing a heavy strength training exercise and then we're doing a vertical jump and then we're doing another uh back support and then we're doing another vertical jump and what have you. So

Now, if we look at the actual adaptions that we're trying to stimulate, with the back squat we're trying to stimulate all of our strength-related adaptions. So If you've been following along with this podcast from the beginning, then we did maximum strength uh right at the very beginning, one of the first episodes we did. So if you want to go and really dig through all of the individual mechanisms of maximum strength, you can

go back and look at that episode. But very briefly, we're looking at things like increasing so very specifically in terms of the back squat, we would be chasing improvements in coordination, although that's not really relevant for the sport. Um we'd be increasing collectivation. Again, that's

very debatable whether that really improves uh improv uh kind of the the actual sporting movement, but it would improve the back spot itself if it can lower co activation. And then we've got uh obviously um, you know, motor unit recruitment increases, which are incredibly transferable. So very, very valuable. And then in terms of peripheral side, we've got things like hypertrophy, a bit of psychomerogenesis, some lateral force transmission increases.

Um, you know, and ultimately um that's kind of gonna be uh sort of the the stuff that's happening at the muscular level. Now you can add on tendons of stiffness there. if you're talking about things like isometrics or concentric only, probably not really so relevant in the classic straight shortening cycle variation of the back squat. So really when most people kinda look at this and they go, Well,

Heavy strength training is mostly about increasing recruitment and increasing muscle size. I'm like, Well, you're not wrong. I mean that that is pretty much w what we're kind of looking for in terms of transferable gains. But if you were chasing back squat

one max improvements, then it suddenly becomes a lot more complicated. Um but yeah, so in terms of what we're looking for in terms of transferring to sport, yeah, we're looking for recruitment increases, we're looking for hypertrophy, bitter psychomerogenesis. And maybe that lateral force transmission changes as well to the extent that it actually can continue happening for long periods of time, which is not really that clear.

So in terms of the uh vertical jump though, we're looking for speed improvements. So we're looking for things that are basically on the mostly on the neural side, looking for recruitment, looking for firing rate improvements. We're looking for again, if you're looking for the vertical jump itself, then you're gonna have coordination co activation uh going on as well there. And then in terms of peripheral, you're looking for increases in muscle fiber shortening velocity. Okay, so

When we're trying to um enhance the stimulus for the back squat, so if we're trying to enhance the stimulus for motin recruitment, what we want is the highest possible level of recruitment. There isn't a potentiation mechanism that will do that. Okay. I'm going to say that again so that everyone's really hundred percent clear because everyone keeps sending me messages saying, Oh yeah, but this person says there's a priming technique that you can use to increase recruitment. No, there isn't.

There isn't. It doesn't exist. There is no way you can transiently increase motor unit recruitment. and have that then be a potentiation mechanism. So there isn't one that you can do that on. Um hypertrophy, yeah. Okay. So on this side you could increase motor you could increase um not the motor equipment, so you could increase the mechanical tension a little bit.

You can do that with the paper effect and you can probably do that with the paper effect, although nobody really knows what the mechanisms are of the paper fate, so it's not clear. So if you can c create an increase of mechanical tension, then potentially you could get that working for you.

So does the Pap Effect do that? Well, maybe a little bit, if you're not kind of training to failure and you're not chasing repetitions, then maybe in your kind of uh small number of reps that you're doing, you might be able to get a little bit of an increase in mechanical tension. Does it really make that much difference? Probably not. Not in the grand scheme of things. You could literally just do one extra rep and you'd probably make up the difference. So

Honestly, I don't think it's worth chasing a PAP effect or a Pape Effect for the purposes of increasing uh the adaptions that we're seeking in the back squat part of the uh contrast pairing. Okay, so that's like What we're saying there is it's kind of like a a nothing burger, really. It's like it's not really doing anything positive, not really doing anything negative, it's just kind of it is.

Okay. So that would be the effect of the high velocity thing on the back squat. So if you've done your back squat first and then you do the high velocity rep, uh the jump squat or the uh vertical jump and then you go back to the back squat, obviously that high velocity uh kind of uh jump squ jump or or jump squat has then had a a uh potentiation effect on the mechanical tension in the back squat. But honestly, it's probably not really meaningful. And the reality is if you just did

like straight sets of back squats you'd be getting exactly the same effect anyway. Okay. So it is really a nothing bug.

Um, in terms of the opposite way around, do I get a potentiating effect from my back squat on my vertical jump? No, you don't. And this is the really, really, really important thing. So Um if you think about it, pretty much all of the um with the exception of most of fiber shortening velocity.

all of the um the the adaptations that we're seeking in the vertical jump that we're trying to stimulate in the vertical jump are pretty much neural. And everything on the neural side gets flattened because

superspinal CNS fatigue always happens after any strength training exercise that you do. So you're always gonna have a slight uh reduction on that neural side, so you're never going to be potentiating the neural side adaptions on your high velocity work. So Even though heavy strength training might give you a little bit of extra mechanical tension in the oscillal fibers.

you're using in the middle of the uh force velocity curve, you're not going to get the stimulus enhancement that you're looking for in that high velocity repetition by doing contrast pairing. So basically what I'm saying here is that On the side of the heavy strength training, uh adaptation or stimuli for adaptions.

you might get a little bit of a benefit, a tiny benefit on the hypertrophy side, but honestly it is so tiny that it's probably not worth thinking about. And you're getting that anyway if you just do straight sets. On the opposite side, um, with the high velocity exercise, we're probably seeing a slight reduction in neural adaptations that we can uh trigger. And okay, maybe you might get a slight increase in the working um

fibre shortening velocity, but it's not actually probably increasing maximum muscle fiber shortening velocity in that scenario because you're probably not going quickly enough. In the French contrast situation, we're going to talk about assisted jumping, then that's a separate question because you probably would be going fast enough. But honestly

I don't see that we're gonna get any neural benefit uh on the uh vertical jumping side in the context of classic contrast training. So um that's I guess that entire kind of analysis is not like as um cut and dry as I normally am with uh physiology because physiology here I think is being very, very kind of th the the changes are being very relatively uh uh small in comparison to what we would see in other scenarios.

I'm not saying that there are absolutely zero uh differences here. So in the case of the back squat and the hypertrophy, I think there probably is a tiny improvement in mechanical tension. Otherwise you wouldn't get the force output change. Um Similarly, if you get a vertical jump that's slightly higher, yeah, you probably are operating at a slightly higher power up, but I do think that's happening for tension reasons, not velocity reasons.

So again, I don't think it's really necessarily changing the stimulus for the muscle fibre shortening velocity that we would want to get. Unless um, you know, um that is literally the fastest somebody's ever moved, which is possible I guess, but there you go. So um

So yeah, so so that's basically sort of uh unpicking how contract training works. Um so instead of doing that, Rob, what are you currently doing in your strength training workouts in order to maximize the adaptations for speed and the adaptations for strength?

out of the way right at the start. If you wanted to use some like brief uh isometrics, something like that, for the purposes of, you know, long term increases in recruitment and those types of things, cool, chug that after the speed work. And then doing the heavy strength work.

um on its own, just with long rest periods afterwards. And we did mention last time in the potentiation episode, if you want that little bit of a benefit, um, you're doing normal rest periods uh between your exercise, like your heavy strength training, back squat, whatever it is.

um, you know, thirty seconds, a minute, whatever it is before that, just do a max effort vertical jump and then you can get that little potentiation effect before you go right into your set. But um beyond that, yeah, no um No contrast pairings, none of that. And um I think you already kind of answered it um when you were going over how things work and saying, you know, you're not saying there's gonna be no improvement, because people will always tell me why I did this.

And like I saw an improvement. And yeah, we we're not saying there's gonna be no effect, but also a lot of times I'll ask people, Well, in your training, what were you doing before that? And you know, a lot of times they've been using some kind of block. periodized program, something like that. So they'll have been doing no jump work.

um not really very very much jump or speed work at all. And then they add in a contrast method. And of course they jump a little higher, they go a little faster. And then they attribute, you know, that gain to the contrast method. Well, you just really weren't doing anything super useful beforehand. And if you've just been jumping, running, whatever it may be, um, before this, you know

pairing this thing you've done, you probably would not have seen any difference at all in um in the improvement. So I think that's one of the reasons people tend to see, you know, this like quote unquote big change is just they're still following kind of a block system. and sequencing things in a certain way.

Because ultimately all of the neural adaptations on the uh high velocity exercise from the high velocity exercises have to be done in a very, very unfatigured state. So as soon as you start doing heavy strength training, uh all of that possibility just goes out the window. So I think really if people enjoy the contrast training, then what we would probably say is

Make sure that you do some high velocity stuff in the warm up, which is not a big ask really. I mean it's so kinda tiny uh and it doesn't really cost you anything. So do some high velocity stuff at the end of your warm up and then um do the heavy strength training stuff if that's really what you want to do.

or if that's part of the programme that you're going to do. Um, and just limit the amount of high velocity repetitions that you do in between heavy strength training sets. So like we've said, one or two jumps is absolutely more than enough. So before we do the back squat, uh the first back squat, we're gonna actually do a couple of high high velocity, high effort um vertical jumps, and that gives us the adaptions on the velocity side. So we've

Tick that box, fantastic. Then we go into the heavy strength training part of the workout, we do some back squats and we're gonna leave some reasonable rest periods here'cause we're gonna want to, you know, um put the uh vertical jumps in and we're gonna w give ourselves the maximum recovery time. So we're gonna l leave maybe five or six minutes of rest, which means we're not gonna get a PAP effect.

And so we potentially could be getting a paper fight, we're not really sure whether that would start much before maybe the eight to ten minute uh time point. We've we've done the high velocity work already, we then come into the heavy strength training part, we do the back squat, um, then we leave, say, four minutes, and then we do one or two repetitions of the vertical jump, and then we do our next set of back squats.

That is actually not a bad protocol. I mean, it's technically contrast training, but all we've done is say limit the number of high velocity reps you're doing, because you don't want to get too fatigued by doing that because it's going to impact negatively on the back squat. So just do a couple of high velocity reps. And make sure that you do get the stimulus for the actual high velocity adaptations before you even start. And in that c in that in that kind of

scenario, um there's no problem with actually doing contrast training. Is that really contrast training? Technically it is. It's just kind of throwing a potentiation kind of rep in there just before you start. Which actually we've been saying for a long time. If you're doing powerlifting, especially you're taking really long rest periods between set

It's really cool just to grab the potentiation back again'cause otherwise it won't be there when you start the next uh kind of set. So that's that's a pretty cool way I think of of of bridging that bridging that gap. So

That was the classic contrast training method. Um now just run us through this French contrast again,'cause I get a lot of questions about this, so I'm guessing it's relatively popular at the moment.

So that might be like a a somewhat loaded squat jump and then into the final one that's going to be like an assisted pio. So an assisted, like a band assisted jump. And that would be the typical sequence. And I've seen actually that exact. work out in a program. Um someone had sent me and I believe honestly that might actually be in the NSCA um portion where they talk about French contrast method. That might even be one of the actual examples.

But they do all of those for, you know, about like three reps each. the short rest periods between. And then you rest quite a long time before you repeat it for usually like the three to five um total rounds of all those exercises.

Because we understand that plyometrics basically are creating the adaptions in the landing part of the movement because what we're trying to create is an increase in eccentric muscle strength relative to tender stiffness and that is going to change the stretch shorting cycle performance. I'm guessing that is not the way plymetrics are being used in this context.

porting that straight across. Heavy strength training followed by high velocity movement. And then thirdly you've got a power exercise. And then finally you've got an uh assisted um movement exercise at the end. So assisted uh high velocity movement. So all we're doing then is we're taking the classic contrast and we're adding on power training and then finally we're adding on assisted um kind of movement training.

No, you're already laughing'cause you can see what's coming. Basically, um, we've already covered why power training doesn't really do anything unique. It's I mean, people are always chasing that idea that oh no, I'm chasing speed strength. And like, hey. Sure, tell me what unique adaptations underpins to be strength then. And crickets. You get nothing back. Absolute crickets. And there is because there isn't anything. It's impossible to improve power without increasing either strength or speed.

So literally all you're doing is getting better at the movement. You're not actually changing anything. And the reality is putting the power training third in sequence after you've already done two things that are created with a fatigue means you're not going to get any coordination improvements anyway. So it's actually doing zero

Now, finally then, okay, and assistance, and I think this is probably what you were chuckling at earlier, putting the assisted thing at the end is literally the silliest thing you can do because It's the speed thing. It's the one that we're actually trying to chase improvements in speed, which is primarily neural, so we need it to be at the beginning, not at the end.

So again, really, power isn't really doing anything unique that um strength and speed aren't already doing. So your trad contrast um is gonna be way better than French contrast already'cause It's not having unnecessary things in that aren't stimulating nothing unique. Your French contest is already capturing all of that.

theoretically. Having the assisted one at the end is not the right place for it. The reality is you'd want the assistance right at the beginning. In fact you want the assistance on before you even finish the warm up. I mean, that's kind of going back to what we were saying about contrast training. So Well I think really is straight away is that French contrast is a step down from classic contrast. I think classic contrast can be made to work in the way that we talked about it.

as long as you just have some high velocity stuff in the in the warm up, then okay, fine. Yeah, it kinda works. It's nothing, you know, groundbreaking, but it it kinda works. Um French Contrast is just adding two extra things on the end that don't really have any business being there. I mean, they're the the the assistor needs to be at the beginning and the power needs to get thrown out the window. I mean, it is just it doesn't it isn't doing anything.

I mean, it's just I I don't get this obsession with power training when physiologically there's nothing in there that can be um, you know, unique compared to strength training or speed training.

I'm I'm thinking about this live on air. Try trying to think what would what would this what would this do? So I've just done okay, so I've just done a back squat and then I've done a high velocity Uh no, no, sorry. I've done my back scroll and now I'm going to do my um

plymetric. This is my this is my impact phase plymetric that I'm doing straight away then. Okay. So if that's true, if it genuinely is a plyometric and not just a high velocity movement, then How does the back squat potentiating effect or fatigue effect influence my stimulus for eccentric muscle strength?

Very little I would imagine. I don't think it's gonna do very much. You might get a s if if you if your back squat was a little bit more on the fatiguing side, you might see a little bit of a reduction in eccentric force production, which would be negative. If your back spot was a little bit on the less fatiguing side and that she gave you a potentiation effect.

you might see a little bit of an improvement. Again, this is the same territory as what we were talking about in the contrast training analysis. The the changes are probably so small. I mean on the fatigue side, you could push it and it would have a negative effect. The beneficial effect is probably like to be so small that you're not gonna really notice any any meaningful differences. Um

The power exercise following is probably going to suffer a little bit because plyometrics are going to give you that calcium related fatigue from the loaded stretch that they create in the activated state, of course. It's basically an eccentric exercise. Um and then of course assistance after that is again is by that point it's messing around really.

It's not happening. So yeah, I think I think what we're saying is that if you look at French contrast and you assume that the word plumetric does actually mean plometric and not just high velocity movement, then The actual plyometric itself probably isn't that negatively impacted really or positively impacted either.

Um but the subsequent power training becomes very much less effective and it never really was very effective in the first place. And the final kind of assisted uh kind of movement is pretty much garbage at that point. So I think yeah, there's there's two ways of analysing the French contrast. If you take it from the point of view of it being high velocity movements, then okay, it looks like it looks like normal contrast training plus a bit of rubbish on the end.

Um if you look at it from a uh kind of pure poliometric point of view, then Um it is different and yes the biometric is still gonna work the way it would work normally and the way we would program it, but after that everything just kinda goes to hell because there's not really any way of of coming back from that.

from the landing. That's where you're getting the adaptation from. It's the change in eccentric strength relative to tendon stiffness that gives you then the straight shortening cycle improvement. High velocity movements, even with a counter movement, don't give you a straight shortening cycle change. That's not what they're doing.

So I think again, this is why it's so super important to split out things on the basis of physiological adaptions rather than sort of chasing outcomes like strength and speed and power and that kind of thing.'Cause it's just not telling you anything important.

Um how can we summarise this? So well before we d before we summarise Let me ask you the same question that I asked you before, which is that um French contrast then, there's two possible out there's two possible models of this depending on how the vocabulary is being treated. Either we're in the same place as normal contrast training where we're trying to improve um speed and strength and actually power as well.

Um and then secondly, if we are including actual plyometrics where there's this there's landing phases in those uh high velocity movements, then you're adding on straight shortening cycle improvement as well. So the question to you then is In your normal way of programming, how are you tackling improving speed, strength, and stretch shortening cycle in the way that you would normally program?

So just separating things out um in a way that fatigue wise and all that makes

you know, making sure we've got full um eccentric force production as fast as we possibly can, uh, without creating that tender and stiffness improvement at the same time. So we get that uh relative change between those two structures. Um and of course we know when we do that we're gonna create a lot of calcium ion accumulation because you're basically it's a high velocity eccentric contraction.

And that then means anything after that, really the only thing you can put after that is more eccentric stuff. Uh there's no scenario in which you could which is what we were criticising French contrast for in the scenario where it is being done with a plymatic.

And just to be clear, I know that some people are gonna write to me saying, Well, I don't think French on just is supposed to mean that. I'm like, Cool, don't care. Um

You want to put some brief isometrics in, that's fine. Then you go on to heavy strength training, then you go on to plyometrics, then you finish with super maximum ease entries. And you can do that in every single workout. And we'll do another episode on the idea that you can train multiple qualities in single workouts because apparently this idea seems to be

incredibly foreign to most people. They keep sending me kind of plans where they're doing like you sent me one the other day, it was like somebody was doing concentrics on one day and isometrics on a different day and supermaximally centrics on a third day and something different on a fourth day and I'm like, guys, why don't you just do everything in a single workout? It's not difficult.

But the other one is d and you just m brushed up against it there, is this idea that you don't get a stimulus for something unless you do a meaningful amount of volume and I'm like

th this is really, really important. There's this idea out there and it absolutely exists in so many places in the fitness community that if you don't that you can do a thing. Let's say for example we say

uh a hitting a high level of recruitment in whether it's a strength training exercise like a back squat or whether it's a high velocity exercise like a counter movement jump, hitting a high level of recruitment is the thing that triggers the increase in recruitment. Okay, that's the stimulus. That's that's the thing that makes the adaptation happen.

You you kind of you do the repetition and it hits the high level of equipment. Oh no, no, no. You haven't actually triggered the adaptation yet. You need to do another nine repetitions like that. And then suddenly you'll have hit the necessary volume.

to trigger the adaptation. So I know it doesn't work like that. Every single rep will get you closer to well, not get you closer. Every single rep will create the adaptation, just a very small amount of that adaption. And the same thing with hypertrophy Bill go, You know, oh, if I don't do like three sets to failure, then I can't trigger hypertrophy. I'm like, no.

you can trigger hypertrophy with a single repetition. It's just that if you then left it yeah, just a tiny little bit. If you left it a couple of days and then came back and tried to do another repetition and then kick like a you're probably not really going to trigger long term or n what we call net Weekly growth. To get net weekly growth, you kind of need to get up to maybe four or five stimulating routes, more or less a set to failure or warm reserve twice per week.

If you get to that level, then yeah, you're gonna have net weekly growth. But if you did less than that, it's not that you are failing to stimulate hypertrophy, it's just simply that you are not getting um. enough to balance out the atrophy that subsequently happens as well. So I think there's this really, really important concept that volume is not a actual determinant of the stimulus, it's a dose

a it's like a dose kind of um modifier of the stimulus you've got. The actual stimulus comes from the thing of you meeting the conditions for the stimulus. So have I met the conditions? Yes. Did I hit high level of equipment? Yes. Did I hit high level of tension? Yes. Okay, fine. Well then you stimulated the adaption. How much do you get? Okay, well that's now the dose question, isn't it? So

It's like you could literally just do a little bit of everything on each of the training days and do fewer training days and a lot less volume and you get a lot further. I mean

Yeah, you're gonna notice not much is happening. But it's not because you need some huge amount of volume. You're just not doing any amount of volume frequently enough. So yeah, like you said, you trade it twice a week. You need one or two sets and you'll you'll see something. But you do three sets. Once a week, three or four seven.

Yeah, it just nothing much happens. And people argue about that with me all the time still. And I'm like, Well, as a coach, are you programming your athletes um three to four sets once a week for a muscle you want to grow?

And they say, No, of course not. So yeah, of course not,'cause you know it's not gonna work. But then you'll argue about frequency not mattering and all these things. But if you write a program and you give someone three to four sets on Monday and not again until the following Monday, You know that's not working. You you 100% know that. And they never argue that with me. They're like, yeah, well, yeah, I never do that. Well then stop acting like

Frequency doesn't matter and volume is this massively important thing and you need to do all these weird splits and things. It's just it's crazy, you know. I p I can't get

Um, you know, and there's there's interesting stuff happening there that isn't just um hypertrophy related. Then the question becomes If you're only programming eccentric training once a week, the same rules would then apply.

So if people go, Well, you know, I'm doing three or four sets of heavy strength training once a week, I accept that that's probably not gonna be very useful in terms of creating the the hypertrophy of that muscle. But then you say to them, Okay, but you're doing three or four sets of eccentric training once a week. How do you expect that's gonna have any effect? Yeah. It might not be. It might it it but the thing is that they're not asking that question.

So it's anyway, so it's probably a topic for another time. But hopefully this has been a uh useful a little bit ranty in places, I admit. Uh I hopefully this been a useful uh discussion of contrast training. Uh as I say, based on the previous episode that we did about potentiation. So if any of the underpinnings of this episode are not clear, please do go back and watch uh watch. Please go back and listen to. We don't uh do video uh podcasts here.