26 Contrast training

Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardley. I'm here with my co-host Rob Mauseri. We're going to talk about contrast training today. So this is a direct follow-on from last week's podcast on "Attentiation". We covered the concept of "Patentiation" and the two main "Patentiation" models that most commonly discussed in a context of single workout. So the PAP effect, post-activation, "Patentiation" effect, and the PAP effect, post-activation, "Patentiation" performance enhancement effect. We also covered a little bit about the "Patentiation" models that refer to post-workout kind of "Patentiation". We don't really have names, but a general referred to as delayed "Patentiation". And there's a delayed bond that works within a day, and there's a delayed model that refers to a couple of days of time before the "Patentiation" is revealed. So "Patentiation" obviously is a temporary increase in exercise performance caused by previous battle exercise. You can go back to that previous podcast and listen to that if you want to fall break down exactly what it is and how it works. But today we're going to talk about contrast training because it uses the concept of "Patentiation". So the idea that we can do one small battle exercise, whether it's a heavy-strength training kind of set or a high-volosty kind of set. And that will then "Patentiation" 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 adaptions and simple 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 adaption is, have we got a higher level of the thing that is actually going to contribute to an improvement in the adaption that we're seeking? So for example, if you are seeking improvements in motunicruant 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 muscular performance. And yet you've got a small amount of supospinal centrenose system fatigue happening at the same time. Then what you'll get is a reduction in the neural factors, the things that would 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 going to get the better output from this workout than I thought I was going to get without this method that I'm using." But the reality is you're not going to get the adaptions that you're interested in on the neural side because you do have this kind of supospinal centrenose system fatigue that is suppressing the neural output that would actually trigger the adaption you're getting. So this is really, really important because this fundamentally is the difference in frameworks between 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 kind of physiological reality?" So do I have a high level of recruitment? Do I have a high level of rate coding? What is it that I'm trying to actually stimulate with those things? So generally speaking, what we're going to 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 contrast training, we can start to see whether we're going to see better adaptions in terms of saying neurofactors or peripheral factors or whether all we're doing really is creating temporary increases in, say, force or power or speed or that kind of thing. So ultimately, whatever 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 PAP post-activation potentiation and PAPE post-activation performance and antifacts. Just to recap, those do tend to last slightly different periods of time. So generally speaking, the PAPE effect lasts for say maybe two to five minutes and the PAPE effect probably lasts more sort of between eight and fifteen minutes. Generally speaking, we're not going to see PAPE effects occurring much before that, we're probably going to see PAPE effects, primarily being most obvious in the first minute or two post-allocal conditioning contractions. So the most famous examples of PAPE effects tend to be with high velocity un-fatiguing contractions. So if you do a, for example, 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 PAPE effect around about one minute mark when you do that kind of strength test after your high velocity repetition. In contrast, if you're kind of doing sort of a 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, 10 of vertical jumpers and like that, that would be a classic example of a pipe effect rather than a PAPE effect. So generally speaking, and I'm not saying that you can't get PAPE effects from heavy strength when 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 going to see clearer PAPE effects from high velocity work and we're going to see clearer PAPE effects or more common PAPE effects from the heavy strength training side of things. That just generally tends to be the way the 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 when we're looking at the benefits of potentiation, we're always looking to say what is the physiological change that has occurred and does that then benefit me in terms of the adaption that I'm seeking because just improving force 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 degree to improvement in recruitment, have I increased mechanical tension at the fiber level that potentially could give us more hypertrophy. What I'm actually doing that is going to benefit me in terms of the adaption that I'm seeking. So having done that, I'm going to hand out Rob and unlike in most podcasts, when I ask Rob to tell us about how he's using a particular technique, we're not going to start there because the reality is that generally speaking, now there was really program contrast training very much at all. So I'm actually just going to ask Rob to talk through what he's seen in terms of the way that contrast training is used in the S&C community at the moment. And obviously this is just Rob's perspective. I don't really have much perspective because I don't spend a lot of time tracking what the S&C community is doing. But we're going to 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. Cool. Yeah, I think when it comes to contrast stuff, so what I see and what I get asked about a lot is just kind of, you know, the two, I guess, main ones and most people would think of, you're kind of standard contrast pairing. We're doing like a high load, usually slower velocity exercise. You know, I get back squat paired with something low load high velocity. A lot of people would use, it could be a jump squat or just a regular unloaded vertical jump. And then the second one is going to be like a classic 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 strike exercise and then you do a plyometric exercise. And then you do, or sorry, and then you do like a moderate, yeah, you do a plyometric, then you do a moderate load power exercise and then an assisted plyometric. So it's always in that same sequence for exercises back to back. Those are the two main ones. There's a few others that like people bounce around, but don't really have to get two under them. They don't even really count as contrast training. There are more ideas about sequencing exercises through a training session. So those would be the two ones of people program. And you know, with the regular contrast training, I see a lot of times people will do the heavy strength movement purposely with a slower eccentric. And that as well. I mean, I'll see like a four count, five county centric, you know, I guess they go that really slow and heavy. Go on and quote and then pair that with the very fast movement. And I do see the same thing with the French contrast. Sometimes people will do that first heavy strike training exercise with like a deliberately slow eccentric. And then you know, everything else after is kind of standard. But I mean, in other case, I think doing a deliberately slower eccentric is only going to make those things worse. And I don't think it's going to be doing very much in all regardless. So if you want to pick those apart a little bit. Yeah, let's start with the contrast training. So the classic contrast training, as you described, we've got the heavy strength training exercise paired with a high velocity movement. So let's just pick the examples that you gave. Let's pick back squat and a vertical jump, you know, which are great exercises for any athletic program. And if we're programming for, you know, whether it be basketball or, you know, kind of many other team sports as well, volleyball, maybe we probably have, you know, those two exercises in the strength training kind of workout that we'd be planning. So the point here is that we're pairing them. So we're doing a heavy strength exercise and then we're doing a vertical jump and then we're doing another back squat and then we're doing another vertical jump and why have you? so now if we look 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 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 and maximum strength, you can go back and look at the episode. But very briefly, we're looking at things like increasing, so very specifically in terms of the back squat, we will be chasing improvements in coordination of that. Not really relevant for the sport would be increasing characterization. Again, that's very debatable, whether that really improves the actual sporting movement, but it would improve the back squat itself for the lower characterization. And then we've got obviously, you know, motune or chromatin increases, which are incredibly transferable, so very, very valuable. And then in terms of peripheral side, we have things like hypertrophy, bitusochymarogenesis, and lateral force, and machine increases. And ultimately, that's kind of going to be sort of the stuff that's happening at the muscular level. Now, you can add on tenderness difference 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 kind of look at this and they go, well, every strength training is mostly about increasing recruitment, increasing muscle size, I'm like, well, you're not wrong. I mean, that is pretty much what we're kind of looking for in terms of transferable gains. But if you were chasing back squat, one of max improvements, then it suddenly becomes a lot more complicated. But yeah, so in terms of what we're looking for in terms of transferring to sport, yet we're looking for recruitment increases, we're looking for hypertrophy, bitusochymarogenesis, and maybe that lateral force, and machine change as well to the extent that actually, you know, can continue happening for long periods of time, which is not really that clear. So in terms of the 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 going to have coordination, correctivation going on as well there. And then in terms of peripheral, we're looking for increases in muscle size, shortening velocity. Okay. So when we're trying to enhance the stimulus for the back squat, so if we're trying to enhance the stimulus for moti-nate recruitment, or 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 everyone's really 100% clear because everyone keeps sending messages saying, "Oh yeah, but this person says there's a priming technique you can use to increase your recruitment." No, there isn't. There isn't. It doesn't exist. There is no way you can transiently increase moti-nate recruitment and have that then be a potentiation mechanism. So there isn't one that you can do that on. Hyper-chophy, yeah, okay. So on this side, you could increase moti-nate recruitment, so you could increase the mechanical tension a little bit. You could do that with the PAPE effect and you could probably do that with the PAPE effect, although nobody really knows what the mechanisms are of the PAPE effects, so it's not clear. So if you can create an increase in mechanical tension, then potentially you can get that working for you. So does the PAPE effect do that well maybe a little bit if you're not kind of training to failure and you're not chasing repetitions that may be in your kind of small number of reps that you're doing, you might be able to get a little bit of an increase in the 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 it with a difference. So honestly, I don't think it's worth chasing a PAPE effect or a PAPE effect for the purposes of increasing the adaptions that we're seeking in the back squat part of the contrast pairing. Okay, so that's like what we're saying there is it's kind of like a nothing burger really. It's like it would 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 you do the high velocity rep, the jump squat or the vertical jump and then you go back to the back squat, obviously that high velocity kind of jump jump or jump squat has then have a 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 burger. In terms of the opposite way around, do I get a potentiation effect from my back squat on my vertical jump? No, you don't. And this is the really, really, really important thing. So if you think about it pretty much all of the with the exception of a fibreshorning velocity, all of the the the adaptions 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 super spinalcy and fatigue always happens after any strength training excise that you do. So you're always going to have a slight 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 and might give you a little bit of extra mechanical tension in the fibres, we're using in the middle of the force force to curve, you're not going to get the stimulus enhancement that you're looking for in the high velocity repetition by doing contrast pairing. So basically what I'm saying here is that on the side of the heavy strength training, adaption or stimuli for adaptions, you might get a little bit of a benefit, a tiny benefit on high bird's 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 with the high velocity excise, we're probably seeing a slight reduction in neural adaptions that we can trigger. And okay, maybe you might get a slight increase in the working fibre shortening velocity, but it's not actually probably increasing maximum muscle fibre shortening velocity in that. Sorry, because you're probably not going quickly enough. In the French contrast situation, we're going to talk about assisted jumping in that separate question, because you probably would be going fast enough. But honestly, I don't see that we're going to get any neural benefit on the vertical jumping side in the context of classic contrast training. So that's, I guess that entire kind of analysis is not like as cotton dryers I normally am with physiology, because physiology here I think is being very, very kind of, the changes are being very relatively small in comparison to what we would see in other scenarios. So I'm not saying that there are absolutely zero differences here. So in the case of the back squat and I perched there probably is a tiny improvement in the kind of potential. Otherwise you wouldn't get the force output change. Similarly, if you get a vertical jump that's slightly high, yeah, you probably are operating at a slightly higher power up, but I do think that's happening for tension regions, 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, you know, that is literally the fastest somebody's ever moved, which is possible, I guess, but there you. So, so yeah, so so that's basically sort of unpicking how contrast training works. So instead of doing that Rob, what are you currently doing in your strength training workouts in order to maximize the adaptions for speed and the adaptions for strength? Yeah, it's going to sound pretty boring, especially because we went over it. But we keep saying that people keep ignoring it, so he's getting it. Yeah. Just separating things out and always placing the speed work at the beginning of the training session and then having the heavy strength training later on afterwards. So get all of your jump work, all of your, you know, sprint, whatever you want to do out of the way right at the start. If you want to do some like pre-isometric, some like that for the purposes of, you know, long-term increases in recruitment and those types of things, cool, chuck that after the speed work and then doing the heavy strength work on its own just for long-respireds afterwards. And we did mention last time in the Potentiation episode, if you want that little bit of a benefit, you're doing normal rest periods between your exercise, like your heavy strength training, back squat, whatever it is, you know, 30 seconds a minute, whatever it is before that. Just do a max effort for a vertical jump and then you can get that little Potentiation effect before you go right into your set. But beyond that, yeah, no contrast pairings, none of that. And I think you were to kind of answer it when you were going over how things work and saying, you know, you're not saying there's going to be no improvement because people will always tell me why I did this and I guess on improvement. And yeah, we're not saying there's going to 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 programs, something like that. So they'll have been doing no jump work, not really very much jump or speedwork at all. And then they add in a contrast method. And of course, they jump a little higher, they get a little faster. And then they attribute, you know, that gain to the contrast method. Well, you just really want to do anything super useful beforehand. And if you've just been jumping, running, whatever it may be before this, you know, pairing this thing you've done, you probably would not have seen any difference at all in 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 there's still following kind of a block system and sequencing things in a certain way. Yeah, that's probably true, isn't it? I think what's really important about the way you just described that is that it reveals how important it is to do some high velocity stuff before doing any of this kind of contrast work or heavy strain drain work. Because ultimately, all of the neural adaptions on the high velocity exit from the high velocity exercises have to be done in a very, very unpretty state. So as soon as you start doing heavy strength training, all of that possibility just goes out 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 kind of tiny and it doesn't really cost you anything. So do some high velocity stuff at the end of your warm up. And then do the heavy strength training stuff. If that's really what you want to do, or if that's part of the program that you're going to do, and just limit the amount of high velocity repetitions that you do in between heavy strength training sets. So like we said, one or two jumps is absolutely more than enough for the potentiation effect. So let's say for example, you're saying, let's keep with the same example, we're doing back squats and vertical jumps. So before we do the back squat, the first back squat, we're going to actually do a couple of high velocity high effort vertical jumps. And that gives us the adaptions on the velocity side. So we've ticked that box, fantastic. Then we go into the heavy strength training part of our count, we do some back squats. And we're going to leave some reasonable rest periods here, because we're going to want to put the vertical jumps in. And we're going to give ourselves the maximum recovery time. So we're going to leave maybe five or six minutes of rest, which means we're not going to get a pad effect. And so we potentially could be getting a paper felt. We're not really sure whether that would start much before maybe the eight to ten minute time point. So we've done the high velocity work already. We then come into the heavy strength training part. We do the back squat. 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 deep 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 reduction before you even start. And in that, in that kind of scenario, there's no problem with actually doing contrast training. Is that really contrasting? 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 sets, it's really cool just to grab the potentiation back again, because otherwise it won't be there when you start the next kind of set. So that's pretty cool where I think of of of bridging that bridging that gap. So that was the classic contrast training method. Now just run us through this French contrast again, because I get a lot of questions about this. So I'm guessing it's rather to be popular at the moment. Yeah, definitely is. I've seen rugby guys ask about it. And I mean, all kinds of other sports, but so I get typical protocol. So you're going to have a strength exercise first that could be a back squat. And then you would have your plyometric. A lot of times I've seen that as like a depth drop, something like that. Then you'll do a moderate load power exercise. So that might be like a somewhat loaded squat jump. And then into the final one that's going to be like an assisted plyosone assisted like a band assisted jump. And that would be the typical sequence. And I've seen actually that exact workout in a program. Someone had sent me and I believe honestly that might actually be in the NSCA portion where they talk about French contrast method. That might even be one of the actual tables. But they do all of those for, you know, about like three reps each with short rest periods between. And then you rest quite a long time before you repeat it for usually like three to five total rounds of all those exercises. I think I have, I have a kind of a clarification first, which I suspect will not be forthcoming. But when we talk about plyometrics, we mean that there is a landing phase. I mean, that's kind of because that's how we understand the way that plyometric training works because we understand the plyometrics basically are creating the adaptions in the landing part of the movement because what we're trying to create an increased knee-centric muscle strength relative to tennis stiffness. And that is going to change the stretch-short and cycle performance. I'm guessing that is not the way plyometrics are being used in this context. Not all the time. So, you know, the depth drum, the depth drum drop would be a, you know, typical plyos, you know, landing phase. But the assisted plyos at the end there would not be a plyometric in the way, you know, we would think of that as speedwork, max speedwork. Certainly an unloaded landing phase is not going to be the same. So, I guess what's probably helpful is for us to just run through this twice once assuming that it is high velocity training, not plyometrics. And secondly, assuming that the detest plyometrics or at least the first of the two is plyometrics. So, if we assume, if we just assume for the moment, what we're saying then is, heavy strength training followed by unloaded high velocity movement, which actually is the same thing as the traditional contrast. So, we're just kind of 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 assisted movement exercise at the end. So, assisted 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 kind of movement training. Now, you're already laughing because you can see what's going. Basically, we've already covered by power training, doesn't really do anything unique. It's, I mean, people are always chasing this idea that, oh, no, I'm chasing speed strength. I'm like, hey, sure, tell me what unique adaptions underpins to speed strength then. And crickets, you get nothing back. Absolutely 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 in terms of any way. So, it's actually doing zero. Negative words. Now, finally then, okay, under systems. And I think this is probably what you were juggling at earlier. Putting the assisted thing at the end is literally the silliest thing you could 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 of the end. So, again, really, power isn't really doing anything unique that strength and speed aren't already doing. So, your trad contrast is going to be way better than French contrast already because it's not having unnecessary things in the aren't stimulating nothing unique. Your French contrast already capturing all of that theoretically. Having the assisted one at the end is not the right place for it. The reality is you 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 always saying about contrast training. So, what I think really is straight to way 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 warm up. Then, okay, fine. It kind of works. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it kind of works. French contrast is just adding two extra things on the end that don't really have any business being there. I mean, the assistance needs to be there. The power needs to get thrown out a window. I mean, it just isn't doing anything. I mean, I don't get this obsession with powertraining. It went physiologically. There's nothing in there that can be unique compared to strength training on speed training. So, that's kind of how I see the version, if we assume that there's no actual genuine plyometrics in there. Does that all make sense to you, Rob? Yeah. So, if we'd now say, okay, well, now you've got plyometrics in there. What do plyometrics is trying to do? The plyometrics are trying to create an improvement in the eccentric strength and muscle relative to the tendon stiffness. So, what I'm thinking about is live on air. Trying to do 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, no, sorry, I've done my back squat and now I'm going to do my plyometrics. This is my impact phase plyometric I'm doing straight away then, okay. So, if that's true, if it genuinely is a plyometric and not just high velocity movement, then how does the back squat potentially affect or fatigue affect influence my stimulus for eccentric muscle strength? Very little, I would imagine. I don't think it's going to do very much. You might get to, if your back squat was a little bit more on the fatigue side, you might see a little bit of a reduction in eccentric force production, which would be negative. If your back squat was a little bit on the less fatigue side and that gave you a potential change in 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 and arson. 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 going to really notice any meaning for differences. In a special way, you've done three to five, you know, total sets of all of these, you're getting to the third, fourth and fifth. I mean, that always becomes garbage. Yeah, I mean, all of all of it. It's just getting people tired for the sake of getting them tired. But that's always a problem in a lot of these kind of situations. So, yeah, I don't think the plyometric is going to really do anything different from what it would normally do in that position of that sequence. The power exercise following is probably going to suffer a little bit because plyometrics are going to give you that calcium I really think. of teeth from the loaded stretch that they create in the activated state, of course, it's basically an eccentric exercise. And then of course, assistance after that is again, the emus, by that point, it's missing around really. You're not going max feeding. That's the end of all that. No, no, it's not happening. So yeah, I think, I think what we're saying is that if you look at French contrast to PAN, you assume that the word plyometric does actually mean plyometric and not just high velocity movement, then the actual plyometric itself probably isn't that negatively impacted, really or positively impacted either. But the subsequent power training becomes very much less effective and it never really wants to be effective on the first place. And the final kind of assisted kind of movement is pretty much garbage at that point. So I think, yeah, 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. If you look at it from a kind of pure plyometric point of view, then it is different and yes, the plyometric is still going to work, the way it would work normally in the way we would program it. But after that, everything just kind of goes to hell because it's not really any wave of coming back from that. And the way people generally think it's working is just the, you know, the idea, the whole idea that the heavy strength training exercises and increase in recruitment after that, the people think you're getting is going to be contributing to the plyo because they think the concentric portion of the plyo and the fast movement speed is what's good and what's useful coming out of that. But this is not so important to split these out. Yeah, it's so important to split these out and say, look, you've got high velocity movements where the purposes increase speed in the concentric phase. And that you can have a straight shortening cycle benefit sort of aspect to that. So you can do counter movement jumps, that's not a problem. But they're not plyometrics because what you need for plyometrics is an impact phase because the actual adaption comes from the landing. That's where you're getting the adaption from it's the change in eccentric strength relative to tendent stiffness that gives you then the straight shortening cycle improvement. I've lost the movements, even with a counter movement, so I don't give you a straight shortening cycle change. There'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 things. It's not telling you anything important. How can we summarize this? So, well, before we summarize, let me ask you the same question I asked you before, which is that French contrast then, 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 speed and strength and actually power as well. And then secondly, if we are including actual plyometrics, where there's this, there's landing phases in those high velocity movements, then you're adding on straight shortening cycle and improvement as well. So, the question to you then is, in your normal way of programming, how are you tackling improving speed, strength and straight shortening cycle in the way that you would normally prove? Yes. So, all the same things I just mentioned in relation to contrast training, same sequence applause, and then just placing the plyometrically, the actual plyometric later in the training session after all the heavy strength training work, you know, hypertrophy, whatever you're doing, just on the tail end. And it would be, you know, before any kind of super maximal eccentric, but ready to tail end of the workout there. So, just separating things out in a way that fatigue lies and all that makes sense. And that's so important, because what we're saying there is that we're recognizing that the actual stimulus of that plyometric comes from the landing phase. And because it comes from a landing phase, we don't need to worry too much about what is going on in the concerted phase. So, we're not chasing that in high speed kind of concentric phase. What we're chasing is, you know, making sure we've got full eccentric force production as fast as we possibly can, without creating that tenon stiffness improvements at the same time. So, we get that relative change between those two structures. And of course, we know when we do that, we're going to create a lot 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. It's no scenario, which is what we're criticizing French contrast for in this scenario where it is being done with a plyometric. And just to be clear, I know that some people are going to write to me saying, "Well, I don't think French on just as supposed to mean that." I'm like, "Cool, don't care." Yeah, that's why. Start again from first principles and work through it, and you'll get to more or less the same place. However, you want to define it and however you want to structure it, you're going to end up in the same place if you're structuring a sequence of excise types in the wrong order. The only excise order that works is the one that we've recommended, which is you start with speed. If you want to put some brief ice metrics in, that's fine. Then you go on to heavy strength training, then you want to ply a matrix, then you finish with super max release entrance. 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. Like you've suddenly made kind of plans where they're doing like, "You sent me one of the days." Like somebody was doing concentrics on one day, and ice metrics on a different day, and super max release entrance 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. Yeah, you don't have to have this weak sequence where, and I've seen these workouts when they're actually written out. And the volume on the eccentric days and everything about it just never makes any sense at all. It's tons and tons of reps and like a super max release eccentric day. And it's like, "This is going to thank you for anything you're doing in the days following." And not as like, "But if I quite a while afterwards, it doesn't make any sense." There's probably, there's probably an episode coming up soon where we kind of go through the list of the biggest misconceptions in S&C. I think definitely there's an idea of separating out qualities onto different days is right up there, whether it's across the training week or in the training split, or whether it's across blocks in the different kind of weeks of a training year. But the other one is, and you just brushed up against it there, is this idea that you don't get a stimulus for something unless you do a meaning for them out of volume. I'm like, "Yeah, something you're not in any much of them." Misunderstanding the difference between quality and quantity. So quality of something is what actually determines whether you get the stimulus. Have you actually created the conditions necessary to trigger the stimulus? Yes or no? Yes. Okay. Well, then you are going to have an adaption. Is it going to be bigger if you do a little bit more volume? Yes. Absolutely. But this is the thing. I think 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. For example, we say 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 level of loss, a counter-rein jump. Hitting a high level of recruitment is the thing that triggers the increasing recruitment. Okay. That's the stimulus. That's the thing that makes the adaption happen. Then if you do a single repetition of that, then you've triggered the adaption. It's going to happen. How big the adaption is, it might be quite small, but you've actually triggered it. It has to happen. But there's this group of people or there's this belief among the group of people the way we're talking to that you can't stimulate that adaption unless you kind of aggregate enough like instances of it happening. So like you kind of do the repetition in a high level of recruitment. No, no, no, you haven't actually triggered the adaption. You need to do another nine repetitions like that. Then suddenly you'll have hit the necessary volume to trigger the adaption. 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 adaption just a very small amount of that adaption. The same thing with hypertrophy. If I don't do like three sets to fail, 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 get like a, you probably not really get a trigger long term or network or net weekly growth. To get net weekly growth, you kind of need to get up to maybe four or five stimuli. You're going to have some more or less except to fail or work or reserve twice per week. If you get to that level, then yeah, you're going to 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're not getting enough to balance out the atrophy that subsequently happens as well. So I think this is really, really important concept that volume is not a actual determinant to the stimulus. It's a dose, it's like a dose kind of modifier of the stimulus you have. The actual stimulus comes from the thing, you meeting the conditions for the stimulus. So have I met the conditions? Yes. Did I hit high level group? Yes. Did I hit high level of tension? Yes. Okay. Fun. We'll be stimulated the adaption. How much do you get? Okay. Well, that's now the dose question, isn't it? So but that's that's I think what's underpinning this whole idea behind people going, oh, I've got to do all my cons like this ridiculous workout on the East Enemy. And you're saying, look at this guy. And he's like all of the concentric stuff on Monday, all of the isometric stuff on Tuesday, all of the East and East stuff on Thursday. I'm like, honestly, like that's mad. It's like you could literally just do a little bit of everything on each of the training days and do fewer training days. I don't know, that's more human, you get a lot further. I mean, it's not of a mix, any sense at all. When you really think about it, it's just, it's so silly. And I, you know, it just, it's everywhere. That, that model that I showed you is a really popular one currently. And I, you know, I can't wrap my head around it. So many things I think, like you're talking about, with volume come from people thinking about hypertrophy and thing about, well, yeah, if you train a muscle once a week and it'll do very much, yeah, you're going to 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 train it twice a week, any one of two sets, and you'll see something, but you do three sets, once a week, three, four sets. 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 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 because you know what's not going to 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, not again, till the following Monday, you know that's not work. You, you 100% know that. And they never argue that when they're like, 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 can't get the interesting thing there is that because there is a, because people tend to ignore the existence of other adaptions. So for example, if you, if you move into eccentric training and you, so I recognize, you know, I got so come on. Genesis to worry about. You've now got Titan changes to worry about. You know, and there's, there's interesting stuff happening there that isn't just 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 going to be very useful in terms of creating 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 going to have any effects? So you might be a main exhaust and you might have the lens. You might not be. 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 useful, a little bit ranty in places I admit. Hopefully there's been a useful discussion of contrast training 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. Watch. Please do back and listen to. We don't do video podcasts here. No, what's the yes. No, what's the sales? Please do go back and listen to the podcast on potentiation that will connect up really, really well. Hopefully with this one on contrast training, we will be back next week with another topic as yet undecided. But we've got a really good list of things to talk about. So excited to come back and do that. So we will see you back here next time.