For athletes, being fast and explosive is extremely important for almost any sport.
A well-designed training program will have aspects of maximum strength where we’re pushing big weights in the gym trying to get as strong as possible, as well as higher velocity plyometric exercises to take those strength gains and turn them into athletic power.
However, the way a program is organized is massively important. It’s not just about throwing a bunch of random exercises in a bowl, shaking it up, and putting them in a random order.
There are a lot of fancy exercises out there, but that doesn’t mean you have to be doing every single one you see.
You need to look at your sport you’re training for, and figure out the right exercises that transfer to performance in that sport.
This brings us to contrast style training. Contrast training is where we pair a max strength movement with a fast plyometric movement. This takes advantage of what’s called post-activation potentiation.
Post-activation potentiation is induced after a heavy max strength lift, which then supercharges the neuromuscular system and in turn increases the amount and rate of force that those muscles can produce temporarily.
Contrast training lets us take advantage of that post-activation potentiation, and directly bring that to a high-velocity movement to produce as much power as possible.
Contrast training also allows us to do is take full advantage of the time we have in the gym. If you only have a few days to train during the week, it's important you start working in ways to responsibility fit all your training into a shorter time frame.
We’re going to list out three examples of contrast training pairings that you can take advantage of to get as powerful as possible.
Squat/Vertical Jump
When it comes to contrast training, we want to pair exercises together who’s joint angles mimic one another.
So first we’re going to start out with our heavy squats, This can be back squats or front squats but we want to be working in the 1-5 rep range at about 80-90% of our 1-rep max. We’re turning on that post-activation potentiation in the quads, hamstrings and glutes.
Then we’re immediately taking advantage and transitioning to seated jump squats for 3-5 reps.
This is a classic pairing and will make your vertical jump extremely explosive, and a strong vertical jump is a massive demonstration of lower body power.
Also applicable to this area is using heavy rear-foot elevated single-leg squats with single-leg box jumps for a unilateral benefit.
Bench Press/Dead-Stop Plyometric Push-Up
This contrast pairing is going to help us develop explosive pushing power in the upper body, which is very important for football players, for instance.
We’re going to hop on the bench press, again working in the 1-5 reps, 80-90% intensity range. We’re going to potentiate our upper body pushing muscles like our pecs and our shoulders, and then we’re going to immediately take that to some dead-stop plyometric push-ups for 3-5 Reps.
This is going to massively improve our upper body pushing power.
Landmine Rotational Press/Med Ball Scoop Toss
This pairing is going to be targeting the rotational power of our core.
The strength exercise we’re going to perform to get that post-activation potentiation effect is going to be a rotational landmine press, still in the 1-5 rep range. This is going to potentiate the muscles in our core that rotate us in the transverse plane.
From there we’re going to grab a medicine ball and perform 3-5 strong rotational scoop tosses on each side.
Being able to produce quick and strong amounts of force in the transverse plane is going to be essential for sports like baseball, tennis, hockey and golf.
These three pairings aren’t the only pairings you can do to take full advantage of contrast training and its benefits.
The biggest takeaway is thinking about potentiating a group of muscles with a max strength exercise and then pairing that with a high-velocity exercise that uses the same group of muscles and use similar joint angles.
When you perform your high-velocity movement, intent is going to be key. This is not about cardio. This is about putting as much effort as you can into every single rep to see the true benefit of contrast training.
So if you’re performing seated squat jumps, you better be trying to touch the ceiling with every single rep.
If you'd like to watch our full-length video on this subject, click here.
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