5/30/12 Article of the day!
"Things That Aren't Supposed to Work...But Do!
Part 1: Post-Pump Explosive Work
by Christian Thibaudeau
There are things you can do in the gym that just don't make sense. They go against all logic and what we think we know about muscle growth stimulation. Yet despite being illogical, they end up delivering great results!
We're just beginning to understand how muscle growth occurs, and there are plenty of "rules" we thought were etched in stone that turn out to be a misdirection.
Here are some techniques I've experimented with that are just not supposed to work. Any "expert" could poke a thousand holes in them. Yet I've tried them and they work great. In this series I'll present some of these training anomalies and my theory about why they're effective.
Part I: Post-Pump Explosive Work
It's well-accepted by most training authorities (I'm guilty myself) that explosive power work should be done in the earlier parts of the workout when both the nervous system and muscles are fresh and in an optimal working state.
The explanation is that if you do power work later in the workout when the muscle and CNS are tired, your performance will decrease, leading to a lower power production which could be indicative of less fast-twitch motor unit recruitment.
So doing explosive work when a muscle is pumped to its maximum degree doesn't make sense, right?
Well, I tried it and it works great! And I believe this approach will lead to a tremendous increase in muscle mass and work capacity.
I first had a clue about this approach being effective when my old mentor tried something like this while training international level rowers and swimmers. Now, this mentor (Jean Boutet) is the living representation of "no BS." He's guy who had to have a scientific and practical justification for everything in his programs, and if there wasn't already a mountain of solid evidence about a technique, he would rarely try it.
So when he told me that in the latter part of his athlete's preparatory period he used a "reversed exercise order" -- starting with the isolation/low-power work and working toward power work at the end of the session -- my interest was piqued... and I was more than a little shocked.
He reasoned that his athletes required the capacity to be able to continue producing a high level of power even in a fatigued state. It worked. The first week or toe, performance was down on the explosive work. But after a short adaptation period, the power output was just as high as when done in a fresh state. But more importantly, he noticed that his athletes gained more muscle during that phase of training than the rest of the year.
It was somewhat interesting, but I didn't really experiment with it right away. It's when I got to talking with Tim Paterson and he told me that after maximum pump work he felt the need to shove something hard that I decided to try the experiment.
Here's what I did:
1. I started the workout with a pre-pump to bring more nutrient-rich blood into the muscle before doing the stimulation work.
2. The I did my high-threshold strength work.
3. I switched to maximum pump training and contrasted it with speed work.
The way I did this was contrast one set of pump with two sets of speed using the same weight. I used the scrape-the-rack bench press with chains: 185 pounds on the bar plus 50 pounds of chains. The sets looked like this:
SET 1: 10 partial reps at the top, squeezing the contraction hard, 5 partial reps in the middle with constant tension, rest 10 seconds, do 5 full reps
SETS 2 and 3: 3 explosive reps starting from the pins after a 1-2 second pause
SET 4: 10 partial reps at the top, squeezing the contraction hard, 5 partial reps in the middle with constant tension, rest 10 seconds, do 5 full reps
SETS 5 and 6: 3 explosive reps starting from the pins after a 1-2 second pause
SET 7: 10 partial reps at the top, squeezing the contraction hard, 5 partial reps in the middle with constant tension, rest 10 seconds, do 5 full reps
SETS 8 and 9: 3 explosive reps starting from the pins after a 1-2 second pause
SET 10: Maximum normal reps (to failure)
Here's What I Noticed:
1. The speed sets felt really good after the pump work, almost like a relief.
2. I had more "kick" at the start of the explosive reps.
3. The speed work enhanced the pump by itself and made the maximum pump work more effective.
4. My chest stayed round and full for two days without soreness (so it wasn't inflammation)
Three days before, I'd done a similar workout but without the power work, doing four pump sets in a row instead. What I found was that I got a great pump on the first set, it got slightly better after the second, but the third and fourth didn't seem to increase the pump.
With the contrast, every pump set led to a significant increase in pump. I definitely believe that this contrast worked amazingly well to help muscle growth. But why?
My Theory
This is my theory, not proven facts, so take it for what its worth. But I've been doing this for many years and my strength has always been to feel what was going on in the body.
1. D.G. Sale has shown that it's not the actual speed of movement that's important, but rather the intent to accelerate. Since at that point in my workout the CNS was still fresh (I had only done four high-threshold sets and pump work doesn't fatigue the CNS that much) I could still fire out a powerful recruitment command.
Now, the muscle fatigue and increased intramuscular pressure decreased the actual barbell speed (although I was surprisingly fast). The neural impulse was just as important as if I had done the speed work first in the session.
2. The pumped muscle and increase in intramuscular pressure was a safeguard. The problem with speed work (especially if you're very good at it) is that you produce so much momentum that you instinctively have to break the bar to avoid ballistic shock on the joints. And the more explosive you are, the sooner you have to break/decelerate. The pumped muscle reduces actual speed just enough to allow you to keep accelerating for longer, so the muscle actually received a greater training effect: explosive work turns on the fast-twitch fibers and, by being able to keep pushing instead of breaking, keeps those motor units turned on and firing.
The effect is thus dual: Your nervous system learns to keep on firing the FT fibers even after the initial trust, and the FT fibers produce force over a longer distance which means more work and therefore more stimulation.
3. You can still do very efficient speed sets even when the muscle is pumped. That is not true with strength work (doing strength work with a pre-pump is great, but not when the muscle is maximally pumped and fatigued). Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it is because of a completely different motor recruitment strategy, but the fact is that it allows you to do high quality high-threshold work while in a fatigued state and that is very important in sports and might be a special way to stimulate growth.
4. I think that the speed sets allow you to decrease intramuscular pressure a bit, which allows you to pump the muscle more than usual on the next pump set. Inflate-deflate-inflate-deflate-inflate: it seems to enhance the capacity to inflate at each round.
5. The speed sets might also allow you to recruit more of the high-threshold motor units during the pump work, which would make the latter more effective.
6. I had more kick during the speed rep. My theory is that the body sensed that the fatigue would make it hard to produce speed and increased the intensity of the recruitment signal. I call that the big suitcase phenomenon: you see a really big suitcase on the floor. You think that it will be super heavy and instinctively program it as such. When you come to pick it up and it's empty it almost flies up! I think that this is not unlike what's happening: you fool the nervous system into sending a more powerful motor recruitment signal.
In the trenches, this method works, even if on first sight it seems like it can't. -- Christian Thibaudeau"
could ever dream about! 
