Frit17,
Thanks for the shorts! I was joking about getting a stanford piece of attire but you came through. Thanks a bunch!
My PM’s are removed for some reason please post an email address!
First off, DB Dumbed everything down when you really got into it with him (or who ever I was talking to) Mel couldn’t do this. What was he trying to sell? DB tried to make it as easy as possible but still once you understand the separation of plyo work its really quite easy. AS easy as any system I have ever used!
Everyone has to market themselves, you guys act as if you have never marketed anything??? This guy is no worse
Forget about the abstractions, and thoeries. Simply try the DB Hammer program. 9 out of 10 people will not get any thing substanial out of it. Yeah the A-reg sounds good in the abstract, and the rebounds, and the AMT jumps and all the rest. You’ll eventually file it away with the HIT, Bulgarian Squat routine, Russian secret method, etc… Bottomline it does not work.
Dude go read facts and fallacies and the thousands of posts from the supertraining site that touches upon hundreds of topics in an easy to understand format. Then you tell me what he was trying to sell.
On top of that Mr. Siff went to great lengths to expose the type of guru speak that DB claims.
My 3 cents
I will say that the concepts and principals are sound and work for me
I have gotten good use out of them and my performance is getting to a level where I never thought I could achieve with my genetics and I’m an old fart.
I never cracked 12secs in the 100m at 155lbs back in my younger years, and now I’m under that but weigh well over 200lbs, but I’m probably better at shorter distances 
I was running well above 15secs about a year and bit ago.
And my jumping ability isn’t too bad right now, definitely above average and getting better as the months roll by.
This is a damn good roadmap.
There are many people like him who have reaped the rewards on this type of program how do you make a blanket statement like that? (Oh, it doesn’t work!) Believe me he has probably tweaked it to fit his time schedule personal goals etc. It does work. You saying it doesn’t just shows me your ignorance loud and clear. Reasons that I like AREG are when you have a certain amount of predetermined reps starring you in the face you will tend to hold back until the end. With AREG it teaches your system to go now! The fact that you don’t know how many sets you are going to do before you start makes the athlete put up right now. You compete at max effort you have to train that way. (If the training day calls for it) Just understand that if you throw a large chunk of work at an athlete that it’s inherent (for most athletes we deal with) to squeak by with as little effort as possible. And since this formula has been passed down over time so to speak volume tends to rise in order to give slackers results. The problem with this cookie cutter approach is those who put out (honestly) will be fired by the volume in no time. Bottom line whatever program you chose to run needs to handle every need of each athlete. With AREG you can begin to understand how much volume your athlete can handle with positive adaptations. When you can label this to the % you can then predict how many days later it will take them to supercomp etc. It is a great way to help you get to know your athletes! Again it’s not the only way, but it is an effective way for a period of time.
There are ”checks and balances” all the way anyway:
- If you feel miserable in the warm up; you change the workout
- When form deteriorates; you stop sprinting
- If you’re wasted after sprinting you go home, not to the gym
- There’s a reason why primary lifts comes first (when you continue to the gym)
- Etc. etc.
AREG or not, any sensible coach will constantly monitor the quality of training from start to finish. AREG is too static when talking about high-end goals at the very top level. No static system can automatically regulate fatigue during highly specific workouts like jumping close to 8m I practice, or close to 17m in the triple jump or < 6.3s in the 60m etc. We need feelings and experience here (common sense). The same goes for weights as well. Predetermined reps are planned, sure, but constantly under evaluation and dependent on the training phase as well.
I think people are missing the big picture here, I don’t care for methods, systems or exercises, but concepts and principals!
DB’s concepts and principals make sense and work
See, I disagree with you a bit here. The CNS is a tricky character. I have had people feel horrible during the warm up only to run their fastest, jump their highest, or lift the most weight they have ever lifted. Sometimes the times or the drop offs help us understand this. In the same breath I have had guys walk in that say they feel great only to have them stink the joint up in terms of where they were compared to the last session. I read in a different post about the Tendo unit. When trying to work on recruiting the most powerful muscle fibers the speed of the rep is very important. Here is where Jay’s work comes in. If I can steal some of his thunder from an article he wrote about rep speed “it’s not good enough to push as hard as you can.” If you can bench press a weight in 2 seconds remember that an eight % drop would be .16. Can you tell the difference between 2.16 and 2 without the use of the tendon? This is yet another way to AREG your training based on specific traits you are training. These small differences over time add up to huge successes or failures. Again Fatigue is cumulative! Jay regulates, DB regulates, Charlie regulates, why is it not something to look into further? I remember talking to Charlie about regulating plyo contacts in a practice. These are vital elements of a program! Because someone does it different than you does not mean its wrong…or for that matter right.
Fair enough! I agree that regulating cumulative fatigue is something to look further into. However, when digging into highly technical events like the long- triple- and high jump, the variables shift towards technical learning, not simply physical readiness and level of fatigue.
We have to get a decent amount of event specific repetitions done in order to improve. So, for instance in the triple jump, foot contacts (newtons and milliseconds) doesn’t always tell if you’re fatigued or not, since they are highly dependent on biomechanical issues (technique). Also, we cannot always judge fatigue by measuring distance here, since technical matters play a crucial role here also. How are we to judge what’s enough, when to stop and when to continue with a predetermined protocol? Furthermore, it’s obvious that a triple jump practice involves such high level plyomeric strains that it becomes difficult to calculate when recovery is sufficient and when technical (mental) readiness is sufficient for another round, not to speak about joint and tendon recovery – especially when there are other factors that must be issued as well (speed and strength). These other factors have to be done, even thou optimal settings don’t necessarily exist – it becomes a matter of prioritizing.
I’m not saying AREG is wrong (or that I’m right for that matter), I just want to point out that there are so many variables to account for in highly technical events that predetermined protocols cannot be written in stone. We still need, and foremost, sound judgement.
This is a connection that we talk about all the time. Anticipated to unanticipated movement. You sure do need to practice the skill. I would imagine, as I do with my jumpers that run ups from a shorter approach to bring on less fatigue would help in this case. See, this is where AREG can set the baseline for your multiple technical sessions. High frequency training allows an increase in the quantity of high quality attempts. If you put two and two together: If you train more frequently you can drive results at a faster rate if fatigue is managed correctly. Shorten the workouts and get more out of them. This is a good change up, but the problems start when you do not understand the baseline of % fatigue. If you continue to crush an athlete because they look ok at practice, getting them back in the end might take twice as long! How about this, your system has to have a way to manage fatigue that is accurate……… not a guess. If you have that, you have completed half the journey!
Sure, I would love to be able to anticipate recovery, and perhaps short approach technique training can fall within a somewhat calculable envelope. However, short approach work is a totally different primate than high speed jumping – and high speed jumping is what counts the most. Even a mediocre jumper can master low speed jumping almost perfectly whereas he could be totally trashed (technically) when we go > 12 steps. This is very common, and short approach timing will not suffice – it could even be a hindrance sometimes. There’s a gradual progression of course, but the farther you go, the less accurate any predetermined protocol becomes. That means, the better the athlete, the more judgement must follow.
When talking high speed approach, we’re talking maybe a maximum of one session per week, especially if speed and strength is to be dealt within the same microcycle. Also, joint and tendon recovery cannot be anticipated very easily – so the recovery has to have some leeway. Now, you could shorten the interval by doing half the volume (still high speed) – and perhaps do a session every 4 days – but what happens to sprint and strength training in between, and how about joint and tendon injury potential (that usually hides until it’s too late)? I would not go that route. Even thou the volume stays the same with one longer session or two short sessions, joint and tendon recovery is totally different – you’re still banged after 4 hard jumps, so you might as well go for 8-10 and have a whole week (rather than 4 days) in between. Sometimes it takes a while to technically get going, if you stop before that, you have shattered the session and any technical learning that would have followed.
The % fatigue indicator will not suffice in a highly taxing jump session, it could perhaps be used, in some form, in lesser technical sessions, but not when we’re in the devils cage.
Great post Lorien!!! I would also like to add that it would be very difficult to figure out percent dropoffs when you are wroking in a gym with an entire track team at once!!! This is where a good coach has to constantly adjust and regulate training on the fly.
We have had practice where the % drop off is based off the number of steps from the pit and what we are capable of jumping to(distance) with that type of speed. So, in a sense we drop off of distance. We do separate days where we do not have the tension of getting on the board but we are dealing with speed down the run way. We actually can weave this in and out of the cycle. I agree with the notion that it’s a different animal when going back in distance and adding more speed. You do however (especially for a hitch style jumper) have to be able to feel what you are doing before you come barreling down the run way. Also, you have to have the proper strength levels in place to be able to control that speed into the board. There are a ton of different things going into a training program for a jumper. As soon as we switched from hang to hitch with my jumper, she was way smoother going into the board. She was originally trained in Europe as a kid to hitch and was switched when she came to America by her college coach. When she completed college we switched her back. It’s highly individual and so is volume.
40+ Sets for what reason, especially on speed bench (and what was the load, 20 pounds?)?! If anyone thinks that the late Dr. Siff was remotely selfish or marketing hype, you are sadly mistaken (I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth, but if anyone’s thinking that, fuhget about it). Dr. Siff was one of the most generous and kind individuals of his time. Even bringing up DB’s name with Dr. Siff’s is embarassing (regardless of the methods). For those of you who say you don’t care how DB’s marketing affects his reputation, why don’t you go buy that con-artist Kevin Trudeau’s book “Natural Cures I made up in my basement”. The fact is the guy has lied in the past about himself so he has no problem being dishonest.
As with most arguments about DB, the direction of this thread has gone horribly wrong. I’ve actually read through and participated on the DB forum, but DB’s definetly fighting an uphill battle with me because of his past indiscretions. Whether it’s David Brad Nutall or whoever the hell it is, the man has to have some integrity to be credible. Ask John Davies about that.
Don’t believe everything you read and don’t read only what you believe.
I guess breaking 12 seconds for the 100m is a sign of DB Hammer’s results!
Lorien states "
I’m not saying AREG is wrong (or that I’m right for that matter), I just want to point out that there are so many variables to account for in highly technical events that predetermined protocols cannot be written in stone. We still need, and foremost, sound judgement."
great post…too bad judgement (read thinking) is not as trendy.
“Honesty pays, but it doesn’t seem to pay enough for some.” - I can’t remember the person who said this (I remember reading it in “Under the Bar” by Dave Tate, though)
40+ sets for what reason? Well first off the weight was 225 not 50 pounds. He is over a 440 lb bencher. Why does this many sets bother you?? Is it because its not the 10 sets of dynamic bench that WS recommends? Is it because it doesn’t fall into your generic 4 sets 10 rep scheme? Is not the game of football to be explosive as long as possible? Different trait are addressed at certain times in the training block. Hmm he kept getting better, why cut him off? On his 20th one he hit his fastest time! In a regular training session you would have never experienced this gain. We don’t repeat the session any time soon, but in any case we saw a huge performance gain. Here was a kid who struggled to move weight fast getting to understand his body! The other two guys working out with him were out at I believe 7 and 9 sets. If we train them all the same, we get average results??
Again the most important factor is setting up the drop offs to match the training frequency. I call it riding the AREG-wave. You guys call it good judgment. I could care less what you want to call it; I know that guessing as to what you see doesn’t work all the time. People try to lay out wave loading cycles a year or more in advance…but, again, they never workout quite as well. We even see computers try to lay out the volume for us with these algorithms to try and predict these behaviors. It’s not the accuracy that scares me…it’s the few times that it is way off that worries me. For instance, when it tells us we need 50 sets when we only need 7. (the reverse of the two training partners I just mentioned)
But Clemson, I am sure you have all the answers anyways. If this is the case no need to read these posts…right??
Whatever helps you sleep at night. I can’t imagine that workout not taking longer than 90-minutes, so my question is: is there not something you can do within that time that would be more valuable than 46 sets of speed bench? But whatever helps you sleep at night. Just seems ridiculous and I would be embarassed to have a conversation with someone who thought that there was some possible benefit from this type of workout. Guys make me embarassed to be doing what I’m doing (but then again, it’s not me that’s doing harm by being uninformed and making gross assumptions about what is possible and what is right).