Originally Posted by
StrictlySP
--------------------------------
Easy Strength in a Nutshell
By Pavel Tsatsouline
* Lift heavy.
* Keep your reps and sets low.
* Stop your sets and your workout before you get fatigued.
Competitors, especially fighters, often miss the point of strength training. The barbell is not there to make you a better man by testing your mettle; that is what the mat, the ring, or the kettlebells are for. And you are not training to become a weightlifter or a powerlifter. Iron is the means, not the goal.
Your goal is to excel at your own sport, and you lift to get a strength advantage over an opponent of equal skill. and if you hope to be a contender, practicing the skill of your sport must dominate your schedule.
Strength training, as much as you dig it, must take up as little of your time and energy as possible - all in the name of leaving you as much gas in the tank as possible for sparring, hitting the bag, and other skills and drills of the trade.
That is the point many S&C coaches and athletes miss somehow: Strength training ought not interfere with the practice of the sport. The strength regimen must deliver great strength gains without exhausting the athlete's energy or time.
Fighters need to be strong, too. Conditioning is great, but given equal levels of conditioning and skill, the stronger man shall win. Top Russian Kyokushinkai karatekas routinely bench three wheels and squat four to five. Yet, to quote Steve Baccari, coaches of MMA fighters keep confusing "strength and conditioning" with "conditioning and more conditioning."
It is a lot easier to smoke an athlete than to make him stronger. The late Dr. Mel Siff put it well: "To me, the sign of a really excellent routine is one which places great demands on the athlete, yet produces progressive long-term improvement without soreness, injury or the athlete ever feeling thoroughly depleted. Any fool can create a program that is so demanding that it would virtually kill the toughest marine or hardiest of elite athletes, but not any fool can create a tough program that produces progress without unnecessary pain."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Easy Strength Training for Athletes: 10 Rules of Thumb
By Pavel Tsatsouline
1. Use a limited number (two to five) of "big bang" exercises - for example, the deadlift and the floor press from "Power to the People!"
2. Lift two to three times a week.
3. Keep the volume around 10 reps per lift or six when using only singles - for example: 5x2, 2x5, 5-3-2, 3x3, 3-4-3, 4-2-4, 1-2-3-4, 4-3-2-1, 1-2-3-2-1. 6x1, and so on. You may stay with the same weight or vary the weights from set to set.
Ten reps per workout, as advocated by Dan John and by "Power to the People!" is smack in the middle of the rep range recommended by Russian strength authorities like Ozolin, Medvedev, and Vorobyev: 3-6 sets of 2-3 reps.
Dan has observed that after 10 reps, athletes start to compromising intensity or technique, hence his "rule of 10 reps." The coach's favorite set-and-rep schemes are 5x2, 2x5, 3x3, and 6x1.
When singles are used, Dan makes an exception and cuts the volume to 6x1. The man has coached thousands of athletes and could not help noticing that six good singles is all you can expect from an athlete before the quality suffers.
Not surprisingly, the in-the-trench observations of this strength coach extraordinaire are in line with Soviet research. The famous Prilepin's table gives almost the same number of optimal reps in the 90% RM plus intensity zone: seven. And according to Verkhoshansky and Siff, the energy expenditure from a series of singles is 35% more demanding than the same number of reps done in sets. Subtract 35% from 10 reps, and you will get 6 or 7. Of course, only the top couple of singles in the 6x1 will approach the maximal weight.
Some other set/rep schemes to consider are 3-4-3, 4-2-4, 1-2-3-4, 4-3-2-1, 1-4-2-3, and 1-2-3-2-1. You may stay with the same weight or vary the weight from set to set. You may change sets and reps every workout.
the above does not mean that higher volumes are not effective in building strength. Quite the contrary. However, the muscle mass gain, fatigue, and soreness that accompany high-volume training make it inappropriate for most athletes.
Ten reps is where we are and have been for several years, reports Barry Ross. "This allows our athletes to leave exhilarated rather than exhausted. It also allows them to exit the weight room and start immediately on event training."
4. Keep the reps in the 1-5 range, emphasizing doubles and triples.
Soviet weight-lifting champion and authority Robert Roman demonstrated that recovery is rapid and soreness is minimal after low-rep, low-set heavy lifting. Just what the doctor ordered for an athlete.
High-rep training can be painfully ineffective and inefficient in building absolute strength. A friend of Dan's undertook a valiant effort of pushing his deadlift to 405x20. When he tested his 1 RM, he got 425.
Strength and power gains are superior with heavy low-rep training. Dyachkov had two groups of athletes squat. One repped out to failure with 70% 1 RM, and the other did low reps with near-max weights. When it was all said and done, the high-rep group improved their squat by 13.7 kilograms and the low-rep group gained twice as much: 26.3 kilograms. The standing vertical jump was measured as well. The "reppers" improved by 8.7 centimeters and the "near-maxers" by 13.3 centimeters.
Professor Thomas Fahey, one of the top American sports scientists, wrote: "A few years ago, I did some experiments with the college basketball team that involved them only doing singles, doubles, and triples for whole body lifts (cleans, snatches, overhead squats, bench press, standing press, etc). They got very strong but had plenty of energy for playing basketball. They were in and out of the weight room in 20-30 minutes.
Steve Baccari is a stickler for perfect form, and he discovered that none of his fighters could do five perfect deadlift reps. Doubles hit the spot. Some fighters with perfect technique are allowed to do triples. Interestingly, two is the most preferred rep choice of the Russian National Weightlifting Team.
Two or three is a great rep range to emphasize in an Easy Strength program. Four or five is where neural training and muscle building meet, which means you could end up with some hypertrophy. This is out of the question in sports like boxing.
Singles, doubles, and triples are pure nerve force training. Singles, however, are very demanding on the nervous system. Do a few, but don't abuse them.
Hence, doubles and triples rule when it comes to Easy Strength with zero mass gain. But if your sport does not punish muscle gain, don't be afraid to train with fives more often. Regardless, go easy on the singles.
5. Rest approximately five minutes between sets. Practice Fast & Loose relaxation drills in between.
If you want to excel in your sport, you must get over the pump-and-burn bodybuilding mentality.
6. Train in the 80% to 95% 1 RM intensity zone. Always leave at least one or two reps in the bank.
7. Go for a PR, single rep, when you are feeling exceptionally strong, but stop short of an all-out max. Set a "sort of max." Always back off after a PR for at least two weeks.
Dan John has a great name for the type of max you need to push up: a "sort of max." Not surprisingly, the Russians have a term for this method of strength training: the large-effort method, not to be confused with the maximum-effort method. The latter is something to pull out once in a blue moon. The former is the way to train on a regular basis.
8. Vary the intensity every workout, either through cycling the powerlifting style or through less structured advances and retreats.
9. Don't stop strength training in season, but reduce the volume by two-thirds to one-half. For example, do 3x2 instead of 5x2 or 3x2 instead of 3x3. You may switch from three to two strength workouts a week.
Ozolin warns that once you stop training, your strength will drop in as soon as two weeks and advises maintaining it with two or three sessions a week. The Russian specialist recommends cutting back to two-thirds of the volume without reducing the weight.
10. Finish your workout feeling stronger than when you started. Stop the workout if your performance is less than perfect, and come back another day.
Five sets of doubles are what Baccari's fighters usually end up doing, but if an athlete hits a perfect set earlier, the jig is up. Elite coaches from different sports think remarkably alike. Charlie Francis might prescribe five repeats of a sprint drill but stops the athlete if he hits a PR on the third.
Tommy Kono has a powerful insight: "After each repetition erase any flaw detected so the next repetition will be even smoother... If you perform a total of 20 repetitions of snatches in a workout, your 20th repetition should be the one most efficiently performed! That is productivity! If fatigue (of mind or body) is setting in by the 20th, it is better to quit snatching, because you begin to fail in refining your technique."
