¶ Introduction: Strength Without Size
Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardsley. I'm here with my co host, Rob Mauseri. And we're going to talk about a topic today that has been a question that's recurring in my uh Instagram direct messages, in my Instagram questions each week. And I think Rob gets the question quite a lot as well, which is how do you get stronger without getting heavier?
Uh now technically that's not usually the way that it's phrased. Normally the way that it's phrased is how do you get stronger without getting bigger. And okay, fine, that's that's kinda the same thing, but I think it's important to just emphasize the fact that we are talking about strength relative to weight, because uh it's classically referred to as power to weight ratio, but
That is generally the way that we see it in the sporting context. It's kind of how strong you are relative to how heavy you are, because that really determines your ability in um many different sporting situations, but also obviously allows you to fit into a particular weight class. So um basically um the mechanisms of strength
Um we're gonna we're gonna sort of stick to the maximum strength side of things today. Um if there's uh interest we can kind of go down the route of thinking about, you know, the more power to rate uh power to weight ratio type ideas. uh and kind of uh bring speed into the uh mix later on in another conversation. But today we'll stick with uh maximum strength.
¶ Maximum Strength Mechanisms Explained
Um so basically what we're going to do is just describe very quickly, or I'm going to do, is describe very quickly the maximum strength mechanisms, but if you would like a more detailed analysis, there is an episode dedicated to that at the beginning of our series. So maximum strength mechanisms include neural mechanisms and also peripheral mechanisms. On the neural side, you've got coordination, um, coactivation reductions and uh increases in motor unit recruitment level.
And then on the peripheral side you've got obviously hypertrophy and psychomerogenesis, which in this context we tie sort of tend to group together. Um, and then you've got lateral force transmission increases. And depending on what the stretch shortening cycle is doing in the movement that you're interested in, you've then got tender and stiffness or compliance um as appropriate. But
Honestly, generally speaking, it's more likely going to be tendon stiffness that is probably more important in most maximum strength situations. When you go down more the power kind of route or speed route, then yeah, sure, we might be interested in tendon compliance instead.
¶ Two Training Contexts Defined
Now, in terms of um improving maximum strength without uh kind of uh adding too much extra body mass.
Um
Basically there are two things we need to think about, or there's two contexts that we need to think about this in. The first context is if we are actually practicing the movement that we are going to be tested in. So imagine you're talking about either big weightlifting or powerlifting or something like that, strongman.
and you're basically doing a gym exercise which is either identical or as near as identical as you're gonna get to the actual movement you're going to be uh tested in in the competition that you are training for. In that scenario you've got coordination, coactivation reductions
as two really, really important components of your maximum strength improvements. And actually they're going to pretty much obliterate the others in in all reality. They're going to be so much bigger than everything else. Um now on the other side, um Obviously if you're training for a particular uh kind of sport and your gym movements and gym uh exercises don't look pretty much identical or as near as identical as they're going to be to the uh tested movement in the sporting context.
then you're not really gonna have those things. You're not gonna have that coordination improvement uh supporting you. Um, you're not really gonna have that coactivation reduction. Not very much. I mean there's gonna be a little bit more on that side than there is on the coordination side.
But there is not going to be very much transfer on that side. So you're going to be kind of relying on the other mechanisms. So you've got recruitment and then obviously uh when you start looking at the peripheral side, you're like, well, hang on a minute. um if I start improving, you know, kind of muscle size and uh whether it's by sarcomerogenesis or hypertrophy, then I'm potentially going to start
you know, uh creating a mass increase, which is not going to be helpful for me in the context. Not necessarily. I mean we'll get into that as we go through. And obviously at the lateral force transmission, uh that potentiality will be beneficial without
increasing muscle size or or overall body weight. So basically just uh by introducing this, what I'm saying is that you've got two separate contexts, uh we've got two separate contexts to talk about when we're talking about gaining strength relative to size or relative to mass. Uh one context is where we've got coordination uh as a possible uh route to improvement and one scenario where we don't. Cool. So, um
Rob, I'm not sure actually which one we should start with first. Whether we should start with the uh kind of coordination based one where it's more of a powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, strongman type situation, whether we should start with the uh kind of more general one. I guess the general one is probably easier.
¶ General Strength Program Strategy
Yeah, let's start with the jungle. So when you're thinking about uh improving when you're when you're writing a training program and um and your client has a specific requirement to ensure that they don't increase uh body mass
and their focus is maximum strength rather than kind of the more sort of power and speed related end of the spectrum. So we're not we're not talking necessarily about you know, a a kind of um an athlete where they're trying to keep their body weight down for maybe, um, you know, speed related reasons, like a sprinter, track sprinter might want to keep their body weight down, you know, to avoid getting
uh you know, that d detrimental effect of extra mass. But we're thinking more about the maximum strength and of the spectrum. So talk us through a kind of approach that you would take in terms of um, you know, I mean everything, exercise selection, sets, reps, uh frequency, all that kind of thing.
Yeah, I mean so the first one we'll throw right right out of the way just'cause we mentioned it before the podcast. Just don't eat too much. Totally separate. Um but yeah. So take that and run with that one. Um but
¶ Managing Volume and Exercise Selection
From the programming end of things. So really, you know, if I have a client who, for whatever reason, does not want to increase their their overall, you know, mass too much, um, and they just want to get much stronger, I mean the first thing I'm gonna be looking at If you're trying to add as much, you know, muscle mass as possible, get as much hypertrophy as you can, you're gonna be wanna you're gonna wanna be getting as many, you know, stimulating reps, I guess, per session, per week on that.
as you can be um while you're still recovering between sessions. And you know, that could be low or, you know, more often it's gonna be moderate rep. And I guess a little bit more training volume, you know, on a per session and then on a total weekly basis. Um, you know, higher volume of those reps. So, you know, right away I'm gonna be going more towards a bit lower rep ranges. Um, still saying a bit, you know, a bit shy of failure, probably a couple of reps in reserve, something like that.
Um, you know, really just to I guess be limiting the total amount of stimulating reps per session and per week. You know, if you're training lower volumes, very heavy loads, um, lower reps, all those things, you'll be getting a good amount of strength increase. And then if you're, you know, like I said, limiting the overall amount of stimulating rep. you'll be getting, I guess, a smaller amount of total hypertrophy than you otherwise would.
Um, you know, exercise selection wise, if coordination is not a factor, I mean you're still gonna be looking then at typical bodybuilding type exercises. I mean, y if you wanna get stronger, um, you know, I'm still gonna be going for like fairly stable
Um maybe more compound like multi-joint exercises, maybe not as much um isolation work. You know, it would depend on the person and what exactly they want. So there's a lot of different caveats here, but You know, if coordination is not a factor and we're saying here that it's not, you know, you just want general what people refer to as general strength.
which I guess most of the time is coming from hypertrophy. But in this case, just a smaller amount, you know, still looking at things like Bench presses, pull downs, squats. hinges, you know, all the normal stuff, maybe machine variants. Um and then just, you know, like I said, so many things you could think about here, but depending on the person and what muscles they may or may not need for, you know, that specific person, their sport.
That's a really important point because straight away you can you can Yeah, you can make a decision and you can go, well You know, these are of much lesser importance, therefore I can allow that to remain at a lower level of development. And then that saves me. It's like a budget that I'm
Don't you need calves?
Yeah.
If you um you know you need you don't need big fig calves, big forearms, big if you don't need as much you know, middle dealt, which you know is probably pretty logical if you're not a bodybuilder, things like that. But there's all those kind of more um physique. oriented muscles, I guess, that you could you could kind of just leave out of your program. I mean if you're doing, you know, general overhead presses, bench presses, all that kind of stuff.
you'll be getting most most everything an athlete would need without, you know, rounding things out um with with the more aesthetics focused, um, isolated stuff. So yeah, you can leave that. I mean, I'm not gonna be if someone wants to limit muscle mass increase not gonna focus on lateral raises and like brachioradialis work and like little things like that that you would with a bodybuilder who's trying to maximize muscle size everywhere they can.
¶ Defensive and Offensive Strength Tactics
Sure, sure, absolutely. Um and obviously that's that's kind of taking a um sort of defensive strategy, what you're doing there. You're sort of saying, I'm going to try and avoid adding mass by, you know, putting hypertrophy, you know, in places I don't necessarily need it. And also I'm not going to chase hypertrophy aggressively. So I'm going to keep the, you know, rep ranges Uh lower. I'm I'm assuming we're kind of working either two or three times a week in this context, depending on the
The IP or the person.
Um, so yeah, we're keeping sets uh relatively uh kind of uh low. We're keeping um reps uh rep ranges relatively low, so I guess four to six maybe. Um and rips in reserve. And yeah, I mean I think and then a sensible uh kind of uh number of exercises, not not pushing that too much.
But I guess on the other side you could play more uh kind of offensively. So kind of that's the defensive side of it and you're kind of avoiding doing something you don't want to do. You can play o offensively and you've got obviously the mountain recruitment to chase.
¶ Recruitment-Focused Training Methods
So w when you're chasing motion recruitment, what are kind of the tools that you've got in your toolbox?
Then you can use, I mean, plenty of ones we mentioned before, brief isometrics. Anyone you can absolutely use. Um, again, heavier loads, you know, threes, twos, things like that. I think uh most people will will notice if you're trying to really improve your strength on a lift and you've been even doing, you know, sets of like five or six.
and you drop it to, you know, sets a two to three, you really do see like even, you know, exercises that are not super coordination driven, a giant increase in in strength. Um, I mean it goes up very fast in the first few sessions. And I mean, yeah, like it's a coordination element, but it's not a highly coordinated exercise. So then you're getting, you know, you're getting strength increases and recruitment increases in that specific muscle.
Um, again without a ton of hypertrophy and without relying on, you know huge amounts of coordination after maybe the initial few sessions. So
Cool. So yeah, so I guess I guess you could work in a couple of single joint or even single joint, single limb isometric uh contractions into the warm up prior to doing your kind of main session. Um also I guess you could uh move between rep ranges. I mean you could have some uh sessions where you're doing um, you know, sort of as you say
properly heavy loads like twos and threes and other sessions where you're doing kind of the four to sixes and kind of just uh alternate even I guess across the week. I mean that's the thing that you can do really, uh that we t we tend to be kind of uh quite clear that um sort of if you're doing two sessions a week you don't want to be doing different exercises for the same muscle.
Rep range is totally.
Different rate ranges are totally fine. Yeah. I mean that's that's cool. And actually that might be very comfortable. Um and sort of um you know give people the chance to or give the client a chance to um, you know, uh work in that sort of heavier load rate range without feeling like it's kind of, you know, um existential threat every time you go to the gym.
Yeah, not everyone likes twos and threes every
Not every time, no.
No, no one's comfortable.
It's not fun, though, it's not. So cool. Okay. So I think that that's that's a really good um template there. So basically what we're saying is um
Uh, you've got these two main things to think about. You've got the recruitment side which we're chasing. You know, that's our o offensive side, so we're going to try and put isometrics in you could even do some high velocity stuff, although this is not really the context of high velocity uh kind of athletes, but you could do some uh jumps at the beginning or some thing uh throws, but generally speaking isometrics with single joint, single limb is probably going to be the most kind of um
uh kind of uh the the strategy with the longest amount of kind of space in it is gonna carry on giving you gains for the longest
Yeah, you're gonna take a runway with that.
I think so. Um and then and then obviously the main heavy strength training session and that's where we start to think more. Well you can still think offensively, you can go down the heavy load route, but you can also think defensively and try and just avoid, you know, kind of adding too much.
um hypertrophy in places where you don't need it, but also just generally overall, because we can kind of push that lateral force transmission a little bit, you know, without necessarily uh feeling like we're always adding mass.
¶ Nutrition's Impact on Body Weight
But as you said at the beginning, uh, fundamentally, you know, uh there are lots of people out there even now doing strength training programmes which are you know, not like this at all and actually uh much higher in volume and much more like bodybuilding programs, but their body weights are going down. You know, simply because of the what they're eating. So
You know, I think this is the thing that people forget. It's like they they kinda ask these questions about how do I get strong without getting bigger? And I said, Well, it's not so much in your program as much as is what you're doing outside of the gym, really.
Yeah. Like muscle hypertrophy is gonna come along incredibly slowly regardless. And then like overall body weight, you know, if you're if you're not purposely pushing your calories very much. You're just not gonna be increasing body weight very much. So yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Just really watch the food end of the...
Yeah, but of course, you know, if we are in that territory where we're kind of trying to keep calories under control, we don't particularly want to be doing a lot of
uh fatiguing exercise and actually this kind of template works really well anyway. So, you know, it's not gonna be surprising that this kind of template is gonna look pretty much like a kind of not I wouldn't say it looks like a pre competition uh kind of bodybuilding training programme because it doesn't, because it doesn't have, you know, every exercise under the sun in it.
But, you know, it does probably look a little bit more like an athlete training program where they are, you know, either doing a lot of other stuff, um, competition, or um, you know, they are trying to, you know, reduce body weight a little bit.
¶ Coordination-Driven Strength Training
Cool. So now let's um look at the other side of the c uh the equation. So if we're now starting to think about um you know, powerlifting athletes or uh other strength athletes and we've got an exercise uh in the strength training programme that actually can be improved by coordination and it's kind of little brother the co activation reductions
which kind of functions in more or less the same way. Um Uh we've done we've done episodes on piloting before, so I'm not proposing that we kind of start, you know, rehashing that and talking about piloting, but just in kind of print in in principle Um, how are you thinking about then changing the approach when you've now got the ability to improve um strength by coordination?
Yeah. Um, I mean, first of all, if you want to improve strength from the coordination end of things, whatever specific exercise you want to improve. what I said at the beginning of the programme, um, we don't want any fatigue present there, anything to be interfering with the coordination adaptations. So right away just, you know If for some reason you've been doing it later, move it to the front of the program and then that'll help quite a lot. Um
Leaving a few reps in reserve, staying quite a ways from failure as well. If you're trying to improve coordination, like yes, it's load specific. But as long as you're getting in, you know, reasonably heavy loads, we're also I'm gonna also assume that you're, you know, like you said, trying to improve one rep max strength, a clean, a squat, anything like that. Um, you know, reasonably heavy loads.
Few reps shot failure, you know, three, sometimes maybe four. Um, again, you know, that would be limiting the total amount of stimulating reps as well. Little heavy along with those coordination gains. Um, and then frequency, you know, generally training, low session volume, higher frequency, so you can get a lot of fresh practice um through the week and just over time.
So those all you know, those three things right there will definitely help you with the coordination element. Um, reductions in coactivation, you know, kind of just tagging along with those, not not really needing to target them specifically. Um You know, I guess the only caveat with those is, you know, I guess like coordination, it's velocity, load specific to an extent, but you know, if you're using heavier loads, uh you'll be getting them at least, in my opinion, as much as you're gonna get.
¶ Mastering Lift Coordination and Skill
Yeah, I mean I think this is a really interesting uh kind of shift of mindset, isn't it? It's kind of where we're we're now thinking about practicing. We're now thinking about, you know, a skill. So we're now looking to get as many quality skill quality from a skill point of view, not quality from a hypertrophy point of view. Trying to get as many skill uh quality reps as possible. So yeah, I mean like thinking about maybe something like a five sets of two with three reps in
Good job.
I mean that's that can be fantastic.
Oh, that'd be great.
Um, so so that yeah, and so imagine you kind of you're coming into the workout. We're still trying to do the things that we did before. I mean this everything that we
uh talked about just a m uh five minutes ago is still valid. So you're coming into the workout, maybe you're thinking, Okay, so you've either got a high velocity jump or something if you're say let's say we're trying to improve squat performance, maybe you've got a high velocity uh jump to improve quadriceps um kind of motion or maybe you just do a knee extension isometric as probably all not And then you move on to your squat because as you say you put it first in the workout and we do
you know, five sets of two, five doubles basically, plenty of rest. Um now here's just an interesting point we can add. Um because we're trying to improve coordination in the lift, we can use an external focus of attention and it's actually going to help us.
Yeah, it's gonna help us maximise that coordination in the moment, but also it's gonna help us maximise the gains in coordination over time. So n don't tend to talk a lot about external focus attention'cause it's just not uh relevant to us most of the time'cause we're not dealing with um kind of the movements that athletes are competing in. But here it obviously is relevant, so just worth kind of uh reinforcing that. So yeah.
I was just saying real quick mentioning, um, you know, along those same lines, seeking out coaching, you know, feedback. 한글자막 by 한효정 Improving technique as much as you can over time and making whatever small adjustments you would need to that movement pattern.
Yeah, I mean it's gotta be seen as a journey. I mean like I think a lot what happens to a lot of people is they kind of feel like they want to um, you know, uh fix their squat or improve their squat or improve the lift and it's like they think it's something that they're just gonna do and then it's tick. And then they can walk away.
you can carry on kind of making those adjustments and and and and changes. And n not necessarily, you know, uh always through the same uh techniques. Sometimes it can be external focus attention that's doing that for you automatically, some kind sometimes it can be you getting your own video feedback.
Sometimes it can be working with a coach, sometimes it can be all of those things. I mean it's like um there's a whole kind of uh set of uh tools available to us to do that. But that I think is super, super important because as I said at the beginning,
um coordination really is going to massively overshadow all the other mechanisms really. And that's why you see some people who can just do, you know, lift monstrous amounts of weight and it's like, well, Their levers are really good and they've got great coordination in the movement and they've mastered that particular activity.
Yeah. I think one of the things people go wrong with when it comes to improving um coordination in lifts, I see it all the time with the power lifts and that, and even even somewhat in the Olympic lifts.
having people do like incredibly light loads and things like that, like technique days, technique sessions, where they use like just loading that's really not relevant. Um, and then yeah, like you're able to execute the technique that you, you know, may like at the heavier load, but it's just not, you know, at that point, you know, if you say you can squat two hundred kilograms and you do, you know,
hundred kilograms for a technique session, you're really not getting much out of that. Like at that point, I mean, yeah, sure it meets conditions of being like part of failure and things like that, but it's just so light, it's not really, you know, relevant. Um, you know, the recruitment, the muscles involved are gonna change in heavier loads.
um the pattern's just going to be different. So if you're trying to improve coordination technique and that, I definitely don't suggest going that route. And I think I still see that too often. And they're like, yeah, I'm practicing. And it's like, yeah, but I wouldn't really consider that. the right kind of practice for a Heavy strength work.
Yeah, that's really important. And I think um I mean th that that topic is quite deep and it it has got quite a lot of interesting, uh, kind of rabbit holes to it. But Um the easiest way I think just to kind of get a foothold into it is just to think you've you're doing a back squat, barbell back squat, you've got the obviously barbell weight uh on your shoulders.
If you change that barbell weight, um obviously you're not changing your body weight when you do that because you're st still the same person lifting two different weights. Um your centre of mass as a system has now moved. And uh just like I think that one observation helps a lot of people who have, you know, basic understanding of um kind of classical mechanics. It helps them realise that yeah, now my relative muscle activations have got to be different even even if you're
You can't just say, Well, I'm increasing all the muscle activations the same, so it's the same movement. I'm like, No it's not No. Just moved your center of mass closer to the barbell. If the barbell is not heavier, but you've changed changed stayed the same weight, your centre of mass as a system has now moved.
Therefore all your muscle activations are now different. So you can't as you pointed out, you can't just say, Oh, I'm practicing with you know, kind of the the the squat with the bar or with the bar plus couple of plates and yet my max effort squat is like, you know, several plates. It's like, well, they're different things, they're different animals.
Very different. It's the same as it's just a more extreme version, I guess. If I were to do just a bodyweight squat and you take a look at it. And it would look disgusting. And then I can, you know, squat perfectly well with even A plate, two plates, three, four, whatever it may be, it it changes so much as you just add that load to the bar. And people really when it comes to the technique work and that don't um don't really factor that in so well a lot of the time.
Yeah, and I think really what that points us to is uh looking for those uh high quality reps. um, you know, that are close to our kind of target weight. Um, you know, as I say, I think five doubles is a really nice sweet spot. I mean there's other alternatives, absolutely, but I really like that one. I think it has a nice combination of being Uh you know, allowing it's it's it's kind of a truncated headburn, really. I mean I just found headburn was too too much volume. I think it is
That's all right.
It's just silly.
Yeah, but I do four, four to five sets from, you know, two up to three, stuff with that.
I don't think we'll
한글 자막 제공 및 자막 제공 및 광고를 포함하고 있습니다.
Sweet spot. Yeah. So, um and that obviously gets uh, you know, as close as we can to that practice zone, as I say. Um we can use tools like um, you know, the uh external folks retention to maximize those coordination gains. Um really then when you start to sort of bring in um questions around uh like powerlifting. Um
then really it just becomes a matter of saying, Well, okay, now I'm trying to spread myself across a larger number of uh goals that I have. Instead of just having one exercise that I'm trying to chase, I've now got three.
And now it's a lot harder because I've now got to move these across the weekend. That's really where programming for powerlifting becomes a little bit messier and more difficult because you can't just say, Oh well we're just gonna carry on doing, you know, the five six two you can't. It's just
Yeah.
And yeah, for for any sport like you're saying where you have Um with the powerlifting or even Olympic lifting, you have multiple lifts you have to target. Programming wise, through the week, you just want to make sure you have fresh exposure.
Exactly.
to be maximizing coordination over time. You can't just start every session with a squat or start every session with your clean work, things like that. You're gonna have to at some point make it so that you place them all at the beginning, which is where I know we talked a little bit about split. But, you know, you can then do upper lower splits, you know, with success and some other split routine.
And it can make a bit more sense than in the context of, you know, normal athletic training where full body is gonna be kind of the standard.
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's definitely chasing that coordination that changes things. Um, and then when you combine that with the demands of powerlifting, uh requiring you to kind of do three different lifts, then suddenly it's like, well
Okay, how am I going to fit all this in? How I'm going to get these fresh exposures to all of these things, you know, across the week. You can't do that in in in the normal kind of uh full body two or three times a week pattern easily. It can be done if you've got all the time in the world but not as elegant really at it.
Um cool. So you've already mentioned that you've se I mean I think we've kind of I think we've kind of uh sort of Pretty good uh coverage there of those two those two um kind of aspects of this question. But you've already mentioned that you've seen people um, you know, going down the wrong route here uh by focusing on um training with lighter loads to improve coordination. Are you seeing anything um across either of these two scenarios, whether it be um improving
with coordination or improving without coordination. Are you seeing anything that people are doing out there at the moment that is definitely off uh kind of the um, you know, sort of uh uh sensible side of things to put it.
¶ Common Strength Training Mistakes
I mean when when it comes to the side of improving things, you know, that don't have a a coordination element. I mean, I think the biggest one is people just thinking they need to avoid strength training altogether for that activity and that sport. Um I still I see that in combat sports a lot, still people thinking they don't need
or shouldn't do strength training when they have, you know, a weight class cap and things like that. And it's just cause they don't know how to go about it in a way that they could, you know, structure a program to very easily stay in that weight class. And maximize strength gain that's useful for the sport. So yeah, I think just avoiding strength work altogether, still one of the biggest ones.
Um and it's it's unfortunate it's still very prevalent in in combat sports that they really underestimate the benefits and think, you know, it's it's so, so skill-based. that the person with more skill is always gonna win. And if you have two people of equal skill and one of them is significantly stronger, you know, more powerful, etc., that person is going to win.
Every day. Yeah, I mean and we talked about this in the context of combat sports before, uh, and I think there are certain scenarios where you can um kind of get really creative. with uh certain different types of strength depending on whether we're looking at eccentric strength or, you know, different um, you know, velocities and that kind of thing.
Um and in those scenarios I think yeah, we c I mean, especially on the eccentric side where you suddenly now got an extra set of adaptions you can bring in and you know, suddenly you've got the ability to add on a lot of extra strength that isn't really costing you anything in terms of mass. Uh or you know, if it does it's it's it's kind of uh punching well above its weight. So um
Yeah. I think think the other one I see often still when people are trying to limit um size and you know, stay in a weight cap is, you know, focusing on the classic kind of power training. 'Cause they'll say that they're not gonna be putting on size and yeah, you won't really be putting on size. Um you won't really be
Yeah.
We're not getting like transferable strength gains. You're getting good at whatever, you know, loading and velocity you're working at, but there's not anything else happening there.
Interestingly, interestingly, here's an interesting idea there. Um a lot of people do uh yes, you're right, I've seen that. People kinda go, Oh, well I'm just gonna do power training rather than strength training'cause I don't want to add any size. I'm like Okay, so if you're doing basically identical exercises, let's say you're doing a jump squat uh instead of doing a back squat.
Thank you.
Technically you could just do a couple of heavy reps with a couple of reps in reserve and you'd probably get the same gains the recruitment that you're getting in the power training. You might get a little bit of extra stuff, you know, kind of from the heavy strength training that you're not getting from the power training. But you could replace a lot of that with some asymmetric.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I mean that's that's something that I think is really interesting. You could actually just say, Well, actually, you know, I'm just gonna do some max effort isometrics and we're doing them in a more stable situation, I'm gonna do them with less muscle mass. And I'm gonna get better gains in recruitment than I'm getting from either of those two approaches. Yeah. And I have people go, That's heresy. I'm like, Well, actually it's probably quite a good idea.
No. And I actually had a conversation with one of my athletes today who was asking about um some various things with warm-ups. And I was just explaining exactly that, that when you're trying to improve recruitment, you know, the more isolated, the more stable, the less muscle, the better.'Cause it was comparing essentially Very muscle specific versus I think we've talked about it before, like a a pin pull variation on a deadlift.
Yeah.
So he he asked me about that and I you know said and you know, sure y you could, but whatever muscle you for some reason wanna increase, just find a an isometric that Bye.
And I'm not saying that, you know, uh m sort of multi joint is never a good idea.
No, no.
I mean I I think i s sort of single limb multi joint can be really cool. I mean a single limb pulling, that kind of thing.
Um, I think that's got definitely got some val value to it. Um, but yeah, I mean ultimately y you know, you can generally set these things up very easily and quickly, uh, without uh lots of equipment if you've just got a standard commercial gym. Um and You know, they probably will give you that that recruitment improvement that um uh you're actually basically getting as your primary adaptation from something like power training.
Yeah, I mean, that would be the only thing that would be going on, really.
I mean it's so strange. The power training gets so much attention and so much, you know, kind of effort gets put into it and you look at it and go, Well, what adaptation am I getting out of it? And it Coordination in the movement that you're practicing and motivating recruitment. I'm like, what else is going on? It's mad.
And it gets so much attention. It's like it's like practically, you know, a i a third of S and C is just running around doing these power movements. I'm like I'm really not sure I see the uh kind of
No, I mean years ago, you know years and years ago I did them and I'm I'm like nothing ever happened. You know, nothing really happened to my jump heights, my broad jump, my anything really and I'm like Now I know why, but you know, fifteen years ago as an athlete I had no idea. I'm like, wow, I'm doing all this power training and I don't feel like I'm getting more powerful.
¶ Episode Conclusion and Next Topic
Yeah, that's the problem. Cool. Um I think that's basically been a uh pretty good coverage of that topic. Um We will probably come back uh next time and talk about a similar topic. There was something we were going to talk about that was similar. It was, oh yes, it was.
Um, the other c this was one of two questions that I keep getting. So this is the first one. The second one that I keep getting is if I'm like people ask me, they say, if I'm already doing um like a kind of standard um not not competitive bodybuilding training program but like in the in the spirit of a bodybuilding style training program because my my kind of
personal goals have been largely physique related. So been going to the gym, largely doing a kind of, you know, maybe full body, three times a week. d pretty complete exercise selection uh across that uh week. And then they say, Okay, yeah, but now I wanna go and play some sport on a weekend. And so the the question is kind of how do I take my existing bodybuilding programme and add in, you know, some sort of athletic element
uh without now kind of interfering across both the athletic side and the bodybuilding side. Well of course the answer is well you are going to interfere a little bit but uh we will do our best uh next week to answer that question. So You're interested in how to um convert your existing bodybuilding training programme, as I say, not competitive bodybuilding, but like, you know, sort of what we would call general population style bodybuilding training.
If you're interested in adding a little bit of athletic focus to that, we will cover that in our next episode next week.