I’ve been involved with discussions at my work about a new training protocol specifically aimed at increasing myosin ATPase. I don’t know the exact physiology behind this, or the effectiveness but I thought I would post this and see if it possibly matches with some of your experiences or if you may know more about this and could shed some more light on it.
A PhD at a local university who studies muscle fiber typing described this workout with good results.
In a specific lift (back muscles for swimming) start with 60% 1RM, and do as many reps as you can in 10s. Take 50s break and then perform as many reps as you can in 10s again. Continue to do this until the reps you can accomplish fall bellow 80%.
It may look something like this for bench press:
60%1RM
set 1: 14reps in 10s
50s rest
set 2: 13 reps in 10s
50s rest
set 3: 10 reps in 10s
done
Unfortunately I forgot to ask about the frequency that this workout should be performed. But I will ask next time and post here.
In a relatively short time (3 weeks), the amount of sets the individual can accomplish without falling under 80% has typically tripled (3-9sets) and then plateaus. So this method may be a very easy, quick stimulus which reaches adaptations very quickly. The professor testing this workout on a swimmer using pull ups saw that swimmers (100m) best time improve dramatically in that 3 week period, rising from being ranked 12th to 3rd.
This reminded me of a study Dan Pfaff mentioned in one of his seminar on mitochondrial enzymes, and that the researcher found that these enzymes were increased most dramatically by a bike protocol of 4x30s bike sprints with 5 minutes break. The largest increase seen in this enzyme in a very short time frame (2wks) when compared to studies over long periods of time using different methods.
This would match up in many ways the efforts that the sprinters are doing in the pool on the number or reps (strokes) in the time frame and with the matching of the recovery times…… The bonus with this approach is we nail the specific muscle recruitment as well.
Interesting. The reps/set are similar to Charlie’s EMS protocol 10x 10sec contraction with a 50sec rest. The Bike option is very interesting and a good option for those who cant sprint due to injury or lack of facilities.
It would be interesting to see if EMS could be used after a training cycle with that program to break a plateau…