Did DB come up with this 46 sets thing? Or someone from the board? Does this person have a reason why they did this?
All I know is I’ve heard similar, unsubstantiated hype from people claiming that there’s D-I coaches doing the same thing. In a discussion with a prominent strength coach, he mentioned that someone once told him that a football program was doing like 40+ sets of power clean so this coach called the individual out on it, and it turns into, “at least that’s what I heard.” The rationale for performing such a workout just isn’t there. Search the archives and you’ll find the same argument, with different bafoons.
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=7622&page=1&pp=15&highlight=db+hammer
Question for Wannagetfast: Regarding the 40+ set session your athlete completed, what sort of effects where obsereved post workout? Did supercompenstaion from the session take longer than normal for the dropoff you worked to and how did you work this? Also you mention the peak of session was on set 20 did you reset the dropoff from this maximum, yes or no how do you think this effected your results? Also was this a freak session for the athlete or have similar session occured since?
Thanks, Alan.
SpeedKills,
Your Occupation says that you are a “Performance Coach”. Does this mean that you work at a Velocity Sports Performance as a Sports Perfmance Coach?
Yes we re-adjusted the drop off as he set new initials! We had to! It was an incredible workout to any one watching. Mind you this kid was benching about 365 coming in and he left in less than two months benching 440. Now you can say that’s good or bad that doesn’t concern me. What I take pride in is we taught him how to turn his system on and strain against the load. This workout was great, but it was the prep work prior to that which helped him attain those numbers in that freakish workout. Don’t get caught up in the sets so much. Sometimes people are not that excited when they go home after two sets because they are fried. Sets do not determine if a workout was good or bad. They sure look great but it’s not assured that it’s truly great in terms of adaptations. The athletes individual work capacity dictates the appropriate amount of work (sets). Its precision fatigue that controls the drop off which determines the work capacity integers. Just today I re-tested a kid in his vertical jump. He had had a previous best of 26.5 the last time he came in. He came in a few days ago and jumped 25.3. Not really that good considering he hit 26 multiple times in the workout last time. I asked him what he had been doing after that last workout. He said nothing at all. Wrong. He had gone hiking with his dad all day. He thought it was nothing in terms of fatigue. I sent him home to rest, two days later he came back and jumped 27.4. Recovered……you bet. If we can begin to predict what happens as we induce fatigue, we can answer a lot of different training questions and plan the supercompensation that happens. This sounds so elementary I know, but this is the secret to training (I think). Most coaches think there is a Holy Grail in terms of one exercise that changes an athlete. I disagree. If I had the best tools in the world it wouldn’t help me build a house. I wouldn’t know where to start. How would I manage it? This is the key! Attacking individual specific weaknesses while moving through different physiological traits with alarming success. What was the result of the football guy……. well outside of hitting a huge PR in the bench (that and 75 cents gets you a cup of coffee I know…. Read big deal!) We were able to teach his system how to be explosive for long periods of time…over and over again. That might be important in a football game…I’m not sure though. You are probably to busy reading your dynamic bench day manual to see how it can help transfer to the field of play. How did those guys come up with 10 sets anyway?? The bench press methods were one small piece of the puzzle that we used in developing this young man for the rigors of college football.
One of the main reasons why AREG works so well is that most athletes when they come to me are in a state of overtraining. Even athletes that don’t think they were over-trained more than likely were. So, after seeing this plenty of times what we do on occasion is purposely over-train the athlete so that when we do go back to AREG based template their results receive a sling shot effect. We also use this to prep are athletes for an up-coming season. Do you see it’s not such a cut and dry thing? You have to change, you have to know your athlete, and you have to be willing to let go of what you think is right and let AREG work for you.
Are you sure this is correct? This is the best way to assure you are handling volume correctly. It takes no time at all. I have done it with 30 + kid no problem. Teach them about their training. My athletes know how to figure their drop off out in no time. They enter it right into their training journals. I thought you were a coach? Get the athletes involved, it pays huge dividends!! This is a poor excuse not to give a method a try! This is what we have come to expect in this day and age. I swear, the coaches are worse than the athletes.
Clemson,
Another classy comment about someone who said nothing about you. (The 12 second comment). I bet people can’t wait to learn from you!!!
Well said. Whats the purpose of this thread. To discuss training theory or throw insults. I’d say it was uncalled for.
It’s semantics, mostly. I train athletes and I improve their performance, hence performance coach. Oh, and I hate Velocity.
Clemson,
Another classy comment about someone who said nothing about you. (The 12 second comment). I bet people can’t wait to learn from you!!!
You are right that was not productive and CCJ sorry.
I am not trying to have people learn from me but to explore the truth. My point is if I share the 30 JV boys that have broken 12 seconds people would flame me since that speed is no indication of superior methods just maturation. I think THEONE has a good point about how allowing the elite to fully develop like Ben is something we should listen to. My own mistakes of not producing a sub ten sprinter are important and it’s too late for me to fix that.
I will call you Wannagetfast to find out the truth in all of this mess.
So what your saying the people that I learned from were wrong!!! My mentors coaching aproach is all wrong!! Any program will work with novice athletes!! Hmmmm Have you won a national title in track, multiple athletes in the olympics for the throws. When you get to that level, when your athletes are as strong in the gym as they are in the circle you can start telling people how to coach.
Oh and BTW if you ever read anything by louie simmons about dynamic work you would know that why he uses ten sets for dynamic work, he didnt just pull it out of his ass, he uses it to regulate voleume, wow sounds like areg!!! Read Laputin and Eleshko, medvedev,Roman, preplins chart. They all talk about optimal training volume to intensity!!! But i guess 50+ years of russian research and domination in olympic sports doesnt stand up to DB, and his secret society. But hey the according to DB the OL’s are not good for athletes anyways right. So why should we even bother reading those texts!!!
First off, I do have girls that vertical jump over 30’’ so should I be impressed with what you are saying? The Westside method doesn’t even come close to developing the full athlete, and I have had a few athletes who have stalled using those methods…matter of fact they call me. DB’s programs contrary to popular belief do have Russian research and German research and all those that you mentioned entwined in it. But, because they are not hyped like some are, you say it’s not good stuff?? Why then does Bondrachuk rotate his exercises? Could there be an influence there?? HMM. Don’t get fooled by the secret Russian systems. They had flaws to. As most programs do. The program is complete. And of course how you evaluate is also a huge component of it. You have to know what to change and what to prescribe. Being strong is just one piece of the equation and it has its rightful place in DB’s program, its just not real high on the totem pole. Displaying this strength in high speed situations is a different animal all together. Because you are an expert in Eastern European training it wouldn’t surprise you that the jumper I coach feels very comfortable the way we train because it was very similar to how she trained before she came to this country. (She’s Ukrainian but also spent time in Russia. She was trained by both coaches) so read all you want, and quote who you may. She laughs at half the coaches who claim this is Russian or that is Russian. It’s like an MTV fad. I studied and read Russian text! Big woopy. Ask Charlie how many Olympic sprinters they have created?? So are you following blindly? Come on man, if it works it works, why argue? Who cares who created it, who cares what country? There are tons of people who have benefited from a variety of different programs. Is there a perfect one? I think not. I do however believe that the most complete performance program is DB’s. Think about it….it covers everything CNS related!
Could you explain what you base a specific % drop-of in performance on? Where does the number come from in the first place, and why do you choose that number? Is the rule of 1/3rd a serious contender in calculation recovery/supercompensation for exercises outside the gym (or in the gym for that matter, but to a lesser interest for me)?
I mean, it’s obvious that a performance drop of 6% in 60m (pinnacle) will not entail such a performance rise four days later (6%: 6.45 – 6.06, or, 3%: 6.45 – 6.26 two days later, or, 1.5%: 6.45 – 6.35 the next day). Also, how do you incorporate fatigue analysis from other training elements in between?
Also, when you use the tendo-unit to measure peak power (or drop), would you change parameters if the athlete has been sprinting before weights (sprinting being at one end of the speed/strength continuum and perhaps a rationale exists to go for the other end in the weight room) compared to only weight training on that particular day?
Calculating fatigue sounds intriguing, but let’s acquire a closer look at where such phenomenon might dive under or prevail!
Dude why are you trying to put words into my mouth. I simply mentioned the russian texts to explain where Simmons got his numbers for volume on dynamic days. You rip on him saying he pulls those numbers out of thin air . When we all know he is never just makes this stuff up. He has a why and how for everything he does.
Also look in my past posts if I ever said that Db’s stuff didnt work!!! I dont think I did, what I said was the terminolgy that he uses is ridiculous and that there are thousouds of coaches out there who dont do what DB does and have huge success. Also i think it,s insane for him to say OL’s are no good, when they have been used by thousands of athletes with great success. Nobody has a complete program and no ever will, not even DB. To say his is the most complete is impossible, there are to many other factorsinvolved and athletes doing other programs to say that. Remember everything works, nothing works forever. I can oly go by what I see. When I see a shot put leave a girls hand and travel over 60 feet, or a discuss over 210 or a hammer in the 240’s i look, listen and learn what these athletes are doing and talk to the coaches that helped get there.
In this case AREG appears to have been a really good tool to monitor the session. The fact is that because strength-speed had previously been a weakness for the athlete thet had not been near their potential before. I think a weakness in a mode of strength for an athlete results from the body inhibiting itself to protect itself. A major factor will be because the athlete lacks all the structural integrity and levels of strength it requires to produce high force without breaking down. The Inno-Sport system addresses this by puting these pre-requisites inplace which is, i assume, the work you did to lead into this session. With the required qualities in place the body is free to perform. When a target session then comes around it is likely that speed/weight will be able to increase in successive sets as the body allows itself to adjust to its new performace levels. In your case this took place over 20 sets. What we have to realise is that true total fatigue has to be measured backwards from the individuals maximum performance but they might not have performed at this level yet as was the case before this session. If you take the Fitness-Fatigue compensation model as a guide which states that throughout a session fitness improves (by way of motor learning) but fatigue increases and it is fatigue that causes the reduced performance level then there must have been some fatigue at the point they reached their peak of the session which is why i wonder if they where a little more fatigued at the end of the session than the drop-off would imply. This would also account for the reason they were able to complete so many session after the peak (because they where at a lower % of max than assumed).
The Inno-sport method of putting the qualaties in place for a PB performance and then realising it is in contrast to the traditional method of producing a PB performance and forcing the body to adapt. The latter method producing the long lasting cns fatigue of 7+ days is probably a protective measure because the body was over exerted in the PB session and needs time to structurally adapt. Although it is not quite as clear cut as this: The PB in the Inno-Sport programme would probably not be a true max as it will take some time to fully learn the motor firing patterns. In the traditional method we still also need to produce the supramaximal performance so preparatory work must be done leading into the session; i.e. optimal muscle tone, adequate recovery etc…
Taking this into account drop-offs must need some form of speculative maximum (when the true values are not known which would often be the case after a long prepartory training block) to work back from to be accurate? This has been known as buffering, i.e. working from a % of max in a session. So if a sprint session is targeted at 97% max (a 3% fatigue limit) to allow for regenration then ANY drop-off in perfromance will be to much. So we have been working to drop-offs all along. And, we know from experience that monitoring, monitoring, monitoring is the only way to successfully manage it.
Clearly then Drop-offs, and Prepatory blocks are no short cut. But they certainly work.
Alan.
The Westside method doesn’t even come close to developing the full athlete, and I have had a few athletes who have stalled using those methods…
When I look at Westside I ask about maximum strength and that is their expertise. Your attack on them is a bit silly…I don’t expect Dave Tate to work with kickers in Football with their kicking technique!
Wannagetfast you are on this board to defend your techniques since you have financial interest in DB Hammer techniques. Instead of mouthing about your results and how we are trapped in the matrix please remember that the methods are not changing the sporting world. CFTS and other programs have set world records and those methods have been shared and improved to many areas.
When I see 80 feet, 9.69, 30 sacks, 2400 APY, .450 BA and other evolutionary changes I will be shaving my head and chanting AREG principles like a monk.
Beautifully said.
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??
I would not automatically take that 40 set example as a positive. It can actually be a sign of a couple things:
A: over-reaching.
B: lack of intensity in training
If it takes 20 sets after warmups to build up to a limit that can be a sign of delayed catecholamine release (over-reaching/over training) and/or overly dominant endurance adaptations and/or a sign the body is holding back or unable to put out when it counts. If the goal is increased 1RM performance and not maintenance of submaximal 1rm performance (such as a boxer or even bodybuilder) I would rather see a low work capacity and quick dropoff as that’s more of a sign of someone who can turn things on fully. In other words, you’re more apt to see a beginning 100 lb bench presser able to perform over dropoff for 40 sets then you are the record holding 700 lb raw bencher.
However, here’s an example of how one can use dropoff training mixed with traditional training. Look at the absolute performance and the volume maintained to see what they’re telling you and prescribe workouts based on that.
If a guy can do 40 sets over dropoff I would generally take that as a sign that he needs to learn how to put out more energy in less time. So I’d do one of two things.
A: prescribe less volume for a while so that his body has no reason to “hold back”
or
B: Trick his body into putting out more work in less time. Increase the intensity, use contrast methods, or motivational techniques.
You might also see the opposite. A guy who can only manage 2-3 sets consistently over dropoff time and time again. I have found these type of individuals get good results by intentionally finding way to focus on boosting their volume tolerance while perhaps shying away from boositng peak efforts for a time. I know the 2 (peak performance and volume tolerance) can rise together at times but generally speaking the more advanced the ahtlete the less likely that is to occur.
What about just learning how your system operates?? Is that not part of practice. Kelly you have learned a lot from DB’s system correct? I would hope you say yes!
Clemson when I get a minute more I will respond to your post.
I don’t think it’s a matter of if anyone can learn from DB or not.
I think people just feel offended when you say your training system is significantly superior, but you don’t give many clear examples of significantly superior results.
A good start would be giving:
- clear examples of how you trained some athletes (General principles, not # of sets)
- the results
It’d be nice if one of these db hammer threads ever turned from paragaphs of diatribe and rhetoric (on both sides) to some actual numbers and concepts.
Hey all, here’s my obersvations on DBs methods. Following Westside for 6 months I put 40 pounds on my squat. Following DB’s methods for two months I gained 80 lbs. I can go into details if you really want, but all in all, everything was equal.
All this arguing about who DB is sucks. Look at his methods. Anybody who wants to post any of his methods, I’ll back up the theories with Siff or Verkhosky. The only things that aren’t in Supertraining or another such book is AMT jumps and RFI work. Everything else is.
Inno-Sport and DB are two different animals. Inno-Sport has more linear periodization, where DB was a sort of mix between linear and conjugate. There movements are the same though.
A lot of elite coaches have the same theories, they just call them different things. I can say that Siff was horrible because he never made any programs. I can say DB sucks because he writes under a pen name. I have Supertraining, I read articles by russian coaches, I read Inno-Sport, I read Christian Thibadeau, I look at Westside, I even read up on Davies and Pavel, its all useful, you just have to keep your mind open and figure out where each is used.