My roomate benches 405 for reps at 170. He has a desk job. He trains near max bench once per week. Are you saying that if Archuletta didn’t bench heavy 12 times per week his lifts would go down the tubes? And how is he able to handle benching heavy 12 times per week?
Bulgarian weightlifters trained long days nearly every day. For some it was their full time job. The ones who didn’t survive the training volume were simply out of luck. How can this training world be applied to an athlete? How will he have energy for sport skill work?
please dont get me wrong, there are many ways to get stron fast and powerful. adams goal in trianing is to be able to produce maximum contractions over and over again. for example in football his given sport what is required of his muscles? maximum force, velocity, over and over again. so their goal is not only to be strong but to be able to display that strength over and over and over again. so come forth quarter they are still running reacting hitting with the same speed, strength , and velocity as the first play of the game. Spot skill work as i think you define it is built into their system. movement in sport being grossly a feedforward and ballsitc process they train the system in the gym to respond corespondingly on the field of play. the goal being that antagnostic muscle groups relax at the same velocity as agnostic groups activate. this is what makes the program difficult and different the positions and excercises must be held in a spcfic maner with specific muscle groups firing while other are not. when they bench squat or jump muscle activation patterns must be exacting or else the movement will result in inflamation. have u ever gotten up from a bench and grab you shoulderkind massaged it or shaked it out? this is an indication of inflamation formation and incorrect muscle sequencing. that is another reason why most people cant bench press squat or sprint ever day.
This reminds me of the lectures about 10ft depth jumps by Russian triple jumpers. Where are their World Records from these supposed sesions in the last twenty years?. Since there aren’t any, who cares if they did them or not?
Adam is a great football player and a 530BP at 210lbs body weight is excellent, though not better than the 445BP at 173lbs, done by Ben in 1988 or the 675 power lifting contest squat done by Stan Floyd in 1980.
(Of course they all pale in comparison to the Christian Coalition’s Pat Robertson’s claimed 2000lb leg press!)
Could Ben or Stan lift like that every day? No. Does it matter? No.
Is Adam fast relative to football players in general? Yes.
Is he the fastest football player? No.
Is Adam fast relative to the top sprinters? No.
Has anyone training this way ever succeeded at the world class level in the sprints? No.
So, should Adam’s (or Pat Robertson’s) training be put forward as the way to higher performance by top sprinters or anyone striving to expand the envelope of human performance in any dicipline? No.
Don’t forget about the role of speed reserve in Football. This is a one-way street. The ability to express more speed over the short distance allows you to operate at lower percentage of max normal playing speeds but the reverse is not true. More endurance at a set pace does not give any capacity to travel at a higher velocity. Also, relaxation is the key to avoiding the inappropriate operation of the agonist and antagonist simultaneously, and why it is so critical in the sprints.
Also, the development of max strength via appropriate recoveries then may create the ability to express that strength level quite often for a short period, but the continued expression over the longer term will not create more strength, or even the ability to maintain the given strength.
your right on many point charlie but u have to also remember that he didnt train to be a sprinter. im not propossing this way of training as the end all. jay even said that he doesnt believe his system is the end all. but one thing adam can do that those other guys cant is diplay that strength over and over and over again in his choosen sport. he may not be the strongest in any one area but what i am amazed at is how strong he is in a bunch of areas. so what can we learn from this, because there is something special about his system. what can we use from it to make athletes better and to raise th standard of elite performance. lol whens the last time u saw a guy weighing 210 lbs bench 530 squat over 700 run a 4.3 40 have a 39 inch vertical and be able to perform these numbers over and over without deterioration?
great points charlie…I believe that in training there are many roads to Rome, some of them are much proven and used…however, when someone tries a new and hard road…makes me curious …bench 12 times a week_???maybe now, full off season…how are they grouped? if you mean bench, rest 30 min and another bench session…the same repeated 2 times a day 3 times a week, could be more feasible…also…lifting weights is one thing, sprinting is another…the only way you could sprint every day at top speed is that you are…12 years old…However James, I like you hindsights…hope you can expand a bit, (sort of reopening the Schroeder’s methods thread)
12 Y.O…everything he does is less stressfull, less mechanical stress, less power output…even if attempting, not so much damage possible; still growing and high Gh production assure them a great regeneration…also, do not have the tears from years of training
Then in the OVERTRAINING THREAD I talk about how fatigue limits performance…
Interesting post James. I always assumed that this was part of the way training was organised. As you move through the season you accumulate fatigue so perhaps 8 weeks into SPP the results being produced are happening while the athlete is in a state of fatigue (though it may not be crippling fatigue). So my feeling is that whatever they are achiveing at about week 8 is the minimum they will achieve during competition because as we move towards compeition the performance level is rising along with the level of fatigue and then as you cut back on the high intensity work and the level of fatigue drops you get a wave of “performance” that rolls in and it is fairly easy to control this. Since using Charlie’s system my athletes have always peaked when i planned simply because it is inevitable. Now some of them are at higher levels of performance I expect a second wave of supercompensation from when they finish racing through the 10 day taper to the championship. Now i see the true value of the 10 day taper and i think in many cases (e.g. those who don’t necessarily plan what they are doing consiously) 10 days is not enough.[/quote]To which CF asks…
I think in THIS THREAD, i was talking about how training changes over the lifetime of the athlete - intensification of both vol + intensity until the point where it is no longer possible and then decrease in vol and separation of stimuli to permit further intensificiation in what really matters.
Perhaps what i should have said is what it shows on the first slide of the Van’04 DVD which is that as the qualification of the athlete improves not only do your limits increase but your ability to get closer to what is really possible does too. Its like your “protective mechanisms” are desensitised so you can get closer to danger/to doing yourself some real damage.
In the OVERTRAING THREAD i was looking at the yearly plan and how performances during a block of training (SPP) lead to increased ability and at the same time fatigue that if controlled correctly can allow “peaking”.
Perhaps the problem lies in the line “Just as in the tapering thread as you get closer towards raw power you need to separate out the training elements more… at least in sprinting”? Perhaps I am confusing people because it sounds like i am saying that as you get closer to compeition the elements need to be separated? Whereas i really mean that as your qualification increases you need to separate the qualities?
If this isn’t it I can’t see the contradiction, can someone enlighten me?
so if running fast trashes the body then not train with stressors greater than which occur in a sprint , if a elite sprinter experience 3 to 4 times his body weight on each leg during a stride why not train an athlete to be able to absorb forces greater than that over an over again. doesnt it seem weird that something as natural as sprinting would trash your body.
if a sprint or any athletic endevour is done biomechanically sound it does not result in inflamation we have to ask ourselves if tearing the bodies tissues is the proper way to train. it seems counterproductive to train an athlete for years only for him to walk a thin line between injury an success. to train years and to have a body full of scar tissue and yet we say this is the best way to train him, and then have to put said athlete through regenerative measures to insure that that athletes years of tissue trauma dont end his dreams instead of helping him to achieve them. Lets rethink.
Back to reality! We always tear something when we train at high intensities (micro tears), and conversely, when proper time has passed after such stress on the body, recovery and regeneration will ensure progress. So, in a way, we’re always between a short-time-detriment and a long-time-improvement. That’s how we are designed to work.
If our goal was to stay as “healthy” as possibly – by choosing one particular perspective of defining ‘healthy’ (e.g. minimizing any tissue tearing) we would perhaps achieve that by minimizing most of all bodily stress. We all know this is not an option for any human, not to mention athletes.
Sprinting does not enter the domain of minimizing tears by absolute standards; sprinting belongs to the domain of extreme bodily stress, hence very different definitions of ‘detriment’, ‘healthy’ and ‘injury’, and most importantly, ‘stress’ is defined in relation to performance, not according to aversion from a physiological vacuum. The latter part is always regarded/calculated post-stress, i.e. ‘when can such stress (or higher) RELATIVELY safely be repeated again’.
There’s a kind of cybernetic approach to high-level athletics (semantics becomes syntax); Stress, recovery and performance are tools for staying on course towards the ultimate goal, not defining factors by themselves.
Why not the 10th day very close to a RM (reptition maximum) so that it would hand in hand with the 10th day max scale workout and then the 4th day at a sub max. However, I think that maybe this is a completely individual aspect as to how well you retain fluid (Maybe this is getting too personal ) Supplements like creatine and/or arginine could come into play here. Possibly even viagra (no joke!) Anyways … thoughts/comments.
I’ve tried to create this plan BUT I’m need more clarification. When are the competitions? I don’t imagine that there’s one just at the end. This bit of information would help in this assignment.
A few points to ponder:
1: Football off-season training is over a short period relative to a long season with very specific skill demands, so it makes sense to stick to the power end of things when you have the chance. As well, you’ll want to rest some muscle groups from the pounding so Bench option looks pretty darn good during this phase.
2:You refer to the ability to do BP over and over. Now consider the Global picture of all high intensity demands. If you consider the idea of stimulus, you can maintain optimal readiness for various HI activities, which, on their own, might seem spread but together are close in.
3: There is a difference by type of HI activity by relative position on the F/T curve (plyo vs Special Endurance for example) and muscles involved ( Bench Press uses about 35% of all Motor Units while Snatch is about 85%)
4: For the reasons in point 3 you can optimally sequence a series of HI activities. Think of making a list of these activities and then ordering them to vary the type and total amount of stress and compare it to a continued stress over one element (BP for example) When totalled by intensity x the no of Motor Units, you’ll see that things are not as far apart as it may appear at first.
5: At the risk of confusing everyone including myself, I’ll try an illustration by comparing max effort activities (by no means all or we’d be at this all night!).
A= Bench Press (approx 35%of MUs), B = snatch (approx 85% of MUs), C = sprint(aproaching 100% of MUs) , D = Squat(approx 65% of MUs).
OK series A,A,A,A,A,A is FAR less stressful both in terms of the amount of muscle involeve and the overall effect on the CNS than series C,B,A,C,D,A. For the same person, the spread must be greater to maintain the same intensity.
Charlie once again you have gotten it exactly right.
James by no means is Schroeder’s training methods inappropriate for the goals that Archuleta needed to obtain, but that is exactly it, the goals of a football player are not the same of those of a sprinter. Archuleta needs to be able to perform at a high intensity over an extended period of short bouts which is exactly what Schroeder has accomplished, that being said the cross over cannot be made to sprinting.
The goal of a sprinter is to have one maximal bout of performance, not many submaximal bouts. Obviously Archuleta is talented, but his performance is at many submaximal performances, he is neither a top notch sprinter, nor top notch power lifter. Also performing the type of workout you propose would not lead to a world class athlete in either respect, both olympic lifts and sprinting require far greater motor unit recruitment, and therefore cause of high cns fatigue as Charlie has just pointed out.
Performing max sprints multiple times a day may lead you to being able to perform many near maximal sprints in a short period of time, but what benefit would running 10.41, 10.42, 10.42, 10.44, 10.45 with 15 minute rest periods be to a world class sprinter if they can’t make finals. Yea that would be a nice parlor trick but that doesnt help the top athletes.
Once again I am not saying Schroeder’s program isnt successful, it just would not be optimal for track performance.
In part true, but hold on a bit about Football players. I’ve trained NFL players and worked with several teams as a consultant myself and there are several things to ponder. As the off-season time is short and the emphasis must be on left side of the F/T curve (the more explosive, the faster improvement can be made and the quicker it is lost if left out, as it often is over a long season with conflicting demands and VERY long days!)
Speed reserve can be advanced by pure speed work, which is far enough to the left to be trained in the time available and is valuable in terms of sustainability of performance for receivers (most patterns are carried out at 85% of maxV except for very short bursts and deceleration). So there is some room to manouver outside the weightroom- and these componants are not helped by leaving it all lying on the gym floor.
) Supplements like creatine and/or arginine could come into play here. Possibly even viagra (no joke!) Anyways … thoughts/comments.