021 Speed training frequency

Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardsley. I'm here with my ghost Rob Marceri. And we're going to continue talking about something that we started talking about last week, which is this idea that you can cover all of your SNC or SNC but strength training certainly, not SNC, not the conditioning part. With a strength training part, you can cover all of your kind of athletic requirements in four separate elements of workout, which is speed followed by strength, followed by a stretch shortening cycle, followed by eccentric strength. And we're going to continue talking about this week because we're going to spin it out over the week. So rather than talking about a single workout in which that four kind of components are being trained in a single workout, we're going to talk about how that workout plan can be managed across a week. And specifically this time, we're going to focus on the speed part. So basically, if whoever's listening to this right now has also heard me talking on my other podcast with Jake Dulleshal, and you'll know that we talk a lot on that podcast about frequency for hypertrophy because that's a bodybuilding podcast. So we talk about frequency for hypertrophy. We talk about the importance of training muscles or even muscle fibers multiple times per week, ideally three or even three and a half times per week to avoid any atrophy happening and to maximize the net muscle growth that you get each of those fibers or muscle regions across the week. Now, when people kind of start from that perspective, they expect that the kind of strength training for athletics or strength training for athletes is going to follow the same pattern. And it actually doesn't because the detraining or dissipation of many of the adaptions underpin other qualities doesn't follow the same kind of rules, what it was, the same rules, but it doesn't follow the same kind of sort of pattern. It actually dissipates a lot more slowly. And specifically with speed, which is going to focus on today, the detraining effect of speed related adaptions is actually very slow. And the reason for that is because most speed adaptions are actually neural and neural adaptions really don't dissipate very quickly. So just by way of example, we've got obviously coordination. I always say to people, look, you know, if you learn to ride a bike when you're a kid, you can not ride the bike 20 years and then you can, you know, get on the bicycle and you can be, you know, pretty much able to ride the bike pretty normally 20 years later. Coordination just doesn't go away. You can forget certain specific kind of patterns. So a kind of example that I thought of recently was obviously some people use patterns to log into their phones, for example, rather numbers. You might forget that precise pattern, but you don't forget actually how to wave your fingers around in the air. The actual kind of motor skill involved in the actual how you wave your hands around in the air is not lost, but the actual specific pattern can be lost. And you can see kind of people forget to do how to do specific movements in perhaps combat sports, certainly in dance. You forget people forget how to do certain moves, but it doesn't actually mean they've forgotten how to do it. It just means they've forgotten the sequence of steps or kind of sequence of body movements that is involved in that kind of coordination pattern. So you don't actually lose coordination at all. You might, as I say, lose. You might forget certain lose. You might forget how something works. You don't necessarily forget how to do it once you've remembered what the actual sequence of steps or movements is. So actually the same thing applies with things like motunit equipment. We've got some really nice data from volunteer activation measurements, which is kind of a gold standards for motunit equipment in kind of most training studies. If you're looking at volunteer activation, you'll see that you can increase that over a course of a strength training program. Then you can do a detraining for months, months and months and months, and you don't actually really lose very much of it if any. So motunit equipment again, neural adaption, same like same as coordination. You can improve coordination, improve motunit equipment, and neither of them are going to dissipate in any kind of, you know, time away from training. We would expect the same thing would apply to firing frequency. We would expect the same thing to apply to correct deviation. And basically that gives you kind of 80% of your speed right there. So with the exception of something like the actual muscle fiber shortening velocity, which could potentially change negatively if it's not being trained regularly. You're not really going to lose anything in terms of the adaptions you've been gaining from your speed related training that you've been doing. Going against that in the opposite direction, people you will often find that people will actually get faster during complete detraining. So I'm just kind of started off just thinking about losing a speed related training for a moment. But if we actually talk about losing all training, so taking a complete week off and just walk around or whatever, then you actually find you probably get faster because you've probably been converting many of your type 2x5 is into type 2A fibers with a little bit of extra fatigue that you perhaps were missing in places or maybe had to do just because of high intensity conditioning. And you actually find that when those fibers come back from type 2A to type 2X, they'll actually get faster. So the muscle fiber shortening velocity, which is not fiber type dependent, it actually is independent of fiber type. And those fiber shortening velocity increases, maybe you'll lose those, but at the same time you'll find that you shift fibers in opposite direction towards type 2X as you actually get faster as a result, even though your actual fiber velocity, which is as I say independent of fiber type in this particular context, because that's what the adoption is, you get each fiber type gets faster if you do high velocity training, you know, I'm actually seeing a net negative probably as a result of that kind of loss. So ultimately speed, which is underpinned as I say by these four kind of neural adaptions, plus this kind of peripheral adaption, which is not so fiber shortening velocity changes. There's a whole episode on this right at the beginning of the series, and ultimately not really going to see much of a negative effect of missing any kind of workouts that are related to speed. So what that means is that if you are starting with our recommended high performance physiology approach to strength training for sports, and keep saying this because we're talking about this before the podcast, we need to make sure we're kind of being super clear that this is our protocol. This is our kind of method that we follow and we think is the right one to use for athletic training, you know, basically speed at the beginning followed by strength training followed by from maximum strength, then stretch running cycle if it's necessary, the particular point in time. Finally, e-send to strength. The speed bit beginning, what that means is that the speed bit at the beginning doesn't follow the same kind of frequency rules as the strength training component. With a strength training component, if we're doing two workouts a week, which is probably the kind of starting point for most people, most of the time in most sports, if you're doing two workouts a week, you're going to have to do the same strength training exercises or at least biomechanical equivalents. So, you know, you don't have to do exactly the same squat pattern, as in the same squat variation, but you probably, if you are doing a squat, then you want to do a squat in both kind of workouts. So it kind of has to be what body modals would call four body AA, although they would probably be doing it three times a week, so they do four body AA. But fundamentally, we're doing the same strength training workout twice a week, because the atrophy effect would cause you to end up basically losing a lot of the gains you're getting from each workout if you did two different exercises in each workout. So the strength component has to be the same, but the speed component doesn't, because what we're saying is that essentially the speed, adaptions, the speed-route adaptions do not dissipate from workout to workout the same way that the strength adaptions specifically like hypertrophy or psychomogeneous diseases. Those adaptions are going to dissipate very, very rapidly, and if you're only doing them once a week, specifically exercise, you are going to end up losing a lot of gains. So with speed, you don't have to do that, which means that essentially the speed workouts that you do do not have to be for body AA, they can be for body AB. So you can actually get a wider variety across your training week, and you don't have to do every single speed exercise in every single workout, which addresses one of the common complaints that we get about doing everything in a workout, which is not that they don't have time. Now, I run to the little bit last time about people who say that, because when you don't go and look at their workouts, they're doing all kinds of completely unnecessary stuff, which is hugely fatiguing and takes a very long period of time to do. But what we're saying here is that if you have like, say, four or six separate speed exercises that you really, really want to do, maybe you've got a vertical jump, horizontal jump, maybe you've got a overhead kind of backwards overhead throw, maybe you've got some more slam, maybe some rotational stuff that you want to do, although we would recommend you do heavy strength training stuff for their rotation rather than high velocity stuff. But we make all these high velocity things you want to do. You can actually split them into two groups and do one on each day. You don't have to do them kind of all in one session. So basically that's what we wanted to cover today, which is the idea that, fundamentally, you can split up your high velocity stuff if you want to do that, because it doesn't follow the same rules as the heavy strength training stuff. So Rob, that was basically kind of the intro that we were going to do for this. What I want to ask you, because obviously you're writing a lot of programs of this type quite regularly. Can you just run us through a couple of examples for different types of athletes, maybe some that are more combat related because that's your specialty, but maybe others in other sports. And give us an example of some high velocity stuff that you're programming and where it fits. And then obviously, just for completeness, because it's useful to see the programs that you're writing, maybe give us the heavy strength training stuff and the stretch-shortening cycle in the East End, just to fill it out and make sure it's clear what the whole workout looks like. Let's start with the combat stuff because that's kind of where your kind of expertise is greatest, I think, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I mean, if you're going to like a combat athlete, obviously we're going to follow that simple, you know, four-part structure. Sure. If I'm writing a program through the week, and I've done this, and so my groups, I've done this with one-to-one clients, I've done this with a remote clients, you go with that repeating split for the strength work, you know, A-A-A-A-A, whatever it is. I'm going to be the most common one, but like you said, I do vary the speed stuff quite a bit. So if I want someone to be generally fast everywhere, there's a lot of different muscle groups I might want to focus on. Good example would be like the first session if I'm doing the speed stuff as A-B, would have something like a vertical jump, you know, a little bit more quad-focus, things like that, getting more of a speed adaptation within those fibers and, you know, just a different pattern. And then something like maybe a horizontal med ball throw, just fast as you can. Maybe some rotational stuff, although I do program that less often, so there you have like two or three drills. And then on the other day, something more horizontal, a little more hip extensor, you know, focus, things like that. Some broad jumps or some like, you know, repeat, like triple jump kind of things, and all of that. And then maybe, you know, vertical med ball slam and overhead throw, some like that, especially people that like a little bit more variety as well, you know, they want to do not be exact same thing every workout mentally can be more fun. And then you just do, you get a wider variety of muscle fibers, targeted movement, patterns, targeted. And I would say, you know, I would maybe argue a more overall improvement for speed stuff. And like, I think that's really important. The thing you just mentioned there, which is that this is not just then helping us construct workouts that are better for athletes, but it also means that if you have like a weekend warrior kind of client who, you know, maybe is just, I say just, but someone who is participating in sports because of it's a hobby rather than kind of an occupation. Then obviously then that variety then becomes more attractive to them because it's used to be, you know, quite such a chore just grinding away in the same thing all the time. So it's not just about kind of being, you know, the right thing for an athletic group. And also then useful as an attractive feature of the programs that you're writing for the GenPOP client as well. Yeah, yeah, keeps it, keeps it a lot more fun because you know, obviously with GenPOP and even with some athletes like engagement is a big thing. Typically, yeah, you know, trying to drive recruitment and all these things and keep them doing the program. So really useful there. And yeah, like, you know, I just got into console to ask him about that over the weekend. Like if I do just my vertical jump work one day and then just horizontal another day because I enjoy them while I lose anything. And you know, obviously our answer is no, you're not. You're still going to progress. They're going to miss out on the adaptations. And if anything, just getting a wider variety could be beneficial. And then you know, going on to the rest of the program there for like a combat athlete telling you everything for the hip joint, you know, love a hip thrust. But any kind of, you know, stiffly deadlift, RDL, trap arc and work. It's, you know, depending on equipment you have, something like that. Maybe low reps, few reps reserved. We'll just say two to three sets, three, five reps, some of like that. Usually I'm going to include say, you know, wide grip bench press or maybe if I want something that will more overall dealt and pack tricep, et cetera, something like a narrow grip, incont press, scoundra pens. And then usually wide grip pull up. Easy almost everyone has a pull up bar. Not everyone has a pull down. So usually some like that from dealing with combat athletes. They're generally good enough shape to be doing, you know, way to pull up stuff like that and getting a lot out of it. After that, you know, basic, basic work for quads and things like that. Like extensions, love, hamstring curls, love, heavy rotational work. So something like we talked about the bent over torso rotations. Were torso is really parallel to the ground, cable set, like hip or higher. And then you're just rotating downwards. You use a lot more load like upright standing drills, but also if you have a nice machine, obviously a rotary machine is going to be awesome. You could use hectic and pack fly embrace against it. All kinds of things you can do if you have the equipment. But if you don't, you just have a cable stack, you know, do the bent over version or you can kneel against a box and all that. We count that as all the heavy strength work. You know, keep that as moderate reps as a couple sets for this stuff. That's not like the hip thrust bench and pull up. Maybe you know, one to two sets, four to eight reps. Some boy, that is kind of an average, what I program. You know, talking about combat sports, eccentric stuff or one fly stuff first. You know, some of them I just repeat cap hops. Some of that is kind of the most, you know, the most I'm doing most of the time. Now, it's not as a, not a huge focus. And then for these centric stuff for combat sports specifically, we talked about overloading like a narrow grip row, something like that. So just using a weight that's quite a bit heavier than you can look. And centrically, you can use momentum to rip it down and then try to control the eccentric there for improving clinch and grappling strength. So that's that's kind of my preferred workout there. And then I'll tweak it a little bit based on, you know, equipment availability and all those things. Cool. Awesome. So interestingly though, that isn't going to be miles away from the kind of, you know, the basic structure and even some of the basic exercises that you would program for many other athletes. I mean, fundamentally like, you know, we're often going to have a hip thrust and a heavy weight loss rotation in pretty much every program that we would write. Yeah, you do golf, you do baseball pitching, you know, the stuff winds up super similar. That's the big two really isn't I mean, and if you're staying on the ground a lot rather than flying around, then you're definitely going to be having some heavy squatting in there or, you know, leg pressing if the squat doesn't get tolerated well. And then really it's then, well, okay, so do I need some hamstrings work or, you know, kind of moving horizontally a lot? Okay, well then as you say, maybe some leg curls in there, you know, am I doing a lot of my upper body? Okay, well, I might have a press and a pull in there as well. And then as you say, the eccentric stuff there's then tweaking. I'm guessing that if you would say modify this for soccer, you would, I'm going to guess and then you tell me how close I am. I'm guessing that you would work backwards because it's easier. I'm guessing that you would have ease and tricks for hamstrings and quads in there. Yeah, yeah, typically that's for change of direction, chugging that at the end and then for sprint. I'm sprint. Yeah. So yeah, super easy. I'm guessing. I'm going to have a pro wide ball player and I'll probably remember that stuff as well because she's got a side to side and she's got to be, you know, pretty quick, although it's very short, short bursts. You're not like running very far on a volleyball court. Sure. Sure. And I'm guessing that in again, with the running athletes, whether they're soccer or volleyball or whatever, you're going to have some hip flexion in there. Yeah, that's the only other thing I might add a lot of times pretty often. Sometimes at the beginning as well, there might be stuff that's just more isometric focused. If people don't have access to like good hip flexion exercises, there's definitely ones you can set up like even with a bench. If you wait, you know, wait one like down and flex, flex and extend backwards over the bench, things like that. But still, you know, even that not everybody is able to do those with the equipment they have. So, you know, that'll definitely vary. Kicking and sprinting and stuff like that. I actually will chuck that in more often than not, but it's maybe one of the things that's not a go to for every athlete. They are like sprinting and combat sports. Do you see it pretty often? Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's kind of, yeah, the eccentric for the hamstrings and quads and the hip flexion is definitely something that's very sprint specific. Yeah. And I guess like the eccentric row is very combat specific. They're kind of those are the things that are dropping in and out. Yeah. Never doing those rows for anybody else. Yeah. I mean, that was a while since we had that conversation actually. How have you found that's gone? Because we talked about this. Why must have been at least a year ago? I'm not 80 months old. Yeah. Quite a while. Good. I've gone very well. I mean, you know, my brothers, guys are well known as he is for being pretty powerful, pretty strong. So they're all kind of animals. Big group of guys who use all this stuff all the time. So definitely seeing good improvements. And then anyone I've given them to for, you know, Jiu Jitsu for Moitai, all these things, they have reported back that they feel quite, quite strong, you know, I'm saying and stuff with that. Obviously, you know, there's the technique aspect, the more efficient you are on all these things. Of course. The easier things are going to feel. So ridiculously strong and better to someone else whose technique is equivalent. You're going to be much better off. Yeah. I mean, just. Just for the physiology background for people who are listening to this, well, obviously I'll hand over to you in my own rub to this describing exactly what the movements are looking like, but just in very simple terms, what we're saying is that if somebody's trying to pull away from you and you are essentially doing like the eccentric phase of a rowing motion as they are pulling away from you, you are using your eccentric strength and they are using their concentric strength to push away from you. So essentially you are going to be approximately kind of, well your muscle fibers are going to be almost two times stronger than their muscle fibers are for the same situation. So you probably may at least at one and a half, if not 1.7 or 1.8 times stronger than them in that context, obviously different muscle is being used, but fundamentally that's kind of ballpark territory. So if you're the same kind of weight class as them, there isn't really a scenario in which they should be able to pull away from you, push away from you technically because you've got that kind of double kind of muscle fiber force production capacity, which is physiological because of Titan. You really shouldn't be in a situation where they can escape those situations except with, as you said, the technique, but is there anything you can kind of add to clarify exactly how those movements are happening? Yeah, I mean, so the most, the one I program most often is going to be on like just a cable stack, so just like a narrow grip row where you just kind of rip it back, you know, everything you can lift. So use momentum to get it back and then try to control it for three to five seconds, something like that. Sure. Um, otherwise, you know, you go too long and it's really not kind of like a flywheel. And so if somebody's got a flywheel and they're using the flywheel for sure, because to use the flywheel, most kickboxers don't have it. So sure, sure, but actually there's, there are some flywheels that are quite portable and not hugely expensive now. I mean, I wouldn't be, you know, enormously difficult. I mean, like, we have this conversation, previously when we were talking about powerlifting gyms and like, the need to buy and invest in the kind of the specialist bars and the plates and all that kind of thing because obviously, the amount of loading that a lot of these powertries are using is off the top end of what you're going to see, you know, in commercial gyms. But, um, and that's expensive. I mean, it is an investment. Um, flywheel is probably going to be, I would imagine come in under many of those kind of investments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if so, you're interested in buying one like, yeah, we would be, sure, we'll be good after. Um, and then you have that more accurate, they'd have that more accurate, kind of pulled because flywheel when you kind of fix it onto a power rack, it's not going anywhere. Or as we know, yanking the stack around, you've got that kind of uncertainty about what's kind of actually happening. But yeah, with flywheel, I think it'd be really, really interesting. I actually had the privilege of playing around with one in a kind of, an upper body sort of scenario because you don't normally set them up for upper body situations. Yeah. I've only really used them myself for a lower. Yeah. The most, most people would be in the upper lower, but I happened to be, uh, looking around a, uh, an athletic facility and they'd got one set up and they were using it for all kinds of upper body stuff. And I had to play around this absolutely brutal. Yeah. But yeah. So, yeah, the, the flywheel would do the same, same job as what you're describing. Yeah. So you're doing like essentially an aerobic row. And that's mimicking this kind of action where someone's pulling away from you. Yeah. And don't, uh, hopefully people don't confuse that with, um, oh, it's a sport specific movement. Looks like the thing. That's, that is now why it works. It doesn't work. No, it's not really. No, we're training the eccentric force producing capacity because what we're looking for is the ability to get the muscle to be activated in that movement as high as we possibly can and also try if we can't add in some local, um, adaptions such as adding Titan, which you definitely got some good data happens in, in the rodent studies, especially, um, and we've, uh, you know, obviously if there's anything else happening, look to that customer addition, we can have that too. So, um, yeah, I think there's a really, really interesting, um, kind of scenario. Um, I wouldn't say it's, you know, as kind of earth shatteringly interesting, just from the external perspective, I mean, I don't know what's happening kind of from what you can see, but I wouldn't say this as earth shattering is the rotational stuff. I think, uh, heavy rotation. No, I wouldn't rob a belief. I wouldn't agree either. And in fact, um, more on the, the gen pop kind of end of things, we have so many people in DC that love golf. So many clients, the, the gen's gen pop you guys love. Okay. So how would you, how would you modify the, the, the combat workout that you just gave us? How would you modify that for golf then? Because I'm betting that it's going to be very similar. Incredibly similar. So like you said, you got to, you're staying the ground, um, all kinds of things. So really a squatter like press pattern is a lot of stuff that does off at the top. So in terms of the high velocity stuff, I bet that's basically identical, isn't it? Basically, um, I do tend to, to leave a little more, um, rotational, have lots of these stuff in there. Okay. Honestly, a lot of times because people also enjoy it. Spectacular. And there's no, figure there's no harm, of course, in training, high force and high speed end of things. That's what we get to be good. So do that a little more often, um, especially because a lot of them are gen pop, you know, they're not all serious, serious golfers. They just want to be better. Um, so leaving that in still some like heavy or sorry, fast max ever vertical jumps and horizontal jumps, um, overhead throws and that ball pass. It's really the same stuff. Yeah. More often with the rotation. And then heavy hip work, hip thrust is most often. And then a squat pattern is in there more often with them. Yeah. Um, in terms of the, the other stuff always focused on heavy point work, you know, that work can be good there. So pull down a lot more than pull up chin ups for them. Sure. Um, some kind of heavy pressing. And then the rotation is big and they all report. Um, how much harder they're hitting after doing a bad heavy rotation work. And then they smack and balls. And it's, it's pretty awesome to hear. And they, they notice it pretty quick. And you know, a lot of them obviously not people that have strength trained a ton and super well or consistently. Um, so they're going to see improvements regardless. But they're, they're generally very surprised with the improvement there. And it's so, so, so basic for them, obviously, plyo stuff, not important. Um, we all for for gen pop, really, you know, no worry about that. And really not, you know, worrying about what can be centric stuff either. If there are people that also do other things, maybe you chucking at the end, but really the heavy strength work is just kind of the base there. And the biggest thing is just that that heavy rotation heavy hip stuff makes such a difference for them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think so many, so many athletic training programs you could build around. I mean, like, you probably, you probably building stuff around kind of the speed work is almost always going to have a vertical jump in there. The strength work is almost always, if not always, going to have a hip thrust and a heavy rotation. Um, and that those three things alone probably would be kind of the core of every, of every athletic training worker. And then you're just adding bits and pieces on, um, according to us, what's necessary. Um, but if you were to go around and look at all the athletic training programs that people are writing today, I would imagine the only thing that would have in common will be the vertical jump. Yeah, honestly, it's like, you know, people still fundamentally are opposed to hip thrust in a lot of cases. Yeah, it's not. I heard some, and I know Brett, uh, not that I'm friends with Brett, congerators are talking to him, but I have seen, you know, I've fallen. And I've seen people try to argue with him that hip thrusts are, you know, not a glued exercise. They're training your lower back and things like that and just craziness. Um, so people will think stuff like that, they'll think like, you know, like a spooit squat or something like that is going to be better for you than a unlike press and a like extension because it wants more functional, you know, quote, unquote, and still get all these athletic, I say, the term loosely athletic programs that are like really, you know, goofy kind of unstable exercises and things that probably feel really hard and make you feel like you're working really hard. And they're just not really doing much of anything. All weird rationale for all these exercises, you know, you'll still see hanging banded squats, bamboo bar benches and training your stabilizers and all this stuff, people saying, oh, you can't, you can't load something if you don't train the stability. I see the weirdest things. And I'm like, you, your program is probably going to look mostly like a bodybuilding-ish program with the stuff on either end and you're going to be much better for it. And people don't always trust me, but usually once they see it, it's very clear. That big. Cool. So, um, I think that's been a pretty good run through everything. Let's just kind of recap for anybody who's been sort of doing cardio while they've been listening to this and needs a quick summary. Basically, what we're proposing is a four kind of component strength training workout for athletes, which starts with speed work, goes on to heavy strength training work, and then stretch running cycle as necessary, but in, as we've been talking about, in many cases, it won't be necessary. And then super maximally, centrics again, where necessary, but again, in some cases, probably not going to be necessary. And what we're adding to the conversation today is that while the strength stuff, you will need to do pretty much the same thing, both sessions of the week, if you're training twice a week, with the speed work, you don't need to do that because the adaptions that underpin speed just don't detrain very quickly. So you don't need to worry about that. You can do a variety of stuff across the week, and you can pick and choose which things that you do in each session. And that gives you much more variety and doesn't mean you have to do kind of five, six things in each workout. So just adding to, we've already presented as the high performance physiology for component and the training method. So, yeah, but no, seriously, if people use this, I want to give us feedback on how they're finding it. And if they think there's any tweaks that we should make, and please get in touch, I'm pretty accessible on Instagram. Same. You're not surprising, you're not surprising, but I am. People are surprised how quick I answer as well, but, you know, I'm always with clients all day. You're touched, you're, that's why. That's very easy. You know, if I'm like in between clients and stuff like that, like I can generally shoot and reply pretty easy. So, I do enjoy the questions. And we also appreciate when people send us kind of set-ups that they're working with on heavy rotation stuff or hit flexion stuff, because we know that that isn't easy for everybody to get equipment for. So, if you've got a set-up that you can see, we'll work in any gym, because it's a like simple kind of cable, a stack or something like that, and you've got a really cool way of doing that. Please do, you know, kind of shoot as a message and explain how that works. That'd be very cool to see. But yeah, so that is our kind of conversation today. Adding this idea of kind of not necessarily having to do the exactly the same speedwork in every single training session, because the adaptions don't really dissipate very quickly. So that's enough for today. We will be back next week with another topic.