One high rep, high intensity training set to improve athletic performance?! This is the type of statement that pits coaches into a battle even more vicious than their most intense competitive athletic days.
In terms of HIT and high rep work vs. more conventional training systems, the truth is often more gray than it is black and white. One set of 20 rep squats has a lot more to offer than many of us think.
If you want big legs, seasoned lifting vets will often tell you this: Eat, and do 20 rep squats. Sure, that’ll work for big legs. But what about big legs for athleticism? What about all that “Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy stuff” you heard about in that one strength training book? Is that even a thing?
Is there really such a thing as a bigger muscle that “isn’t functional” if you are playing your sport fairly often? How many muscular football players do you see in college or the NFL who aren’t very functional?
Ever since I started training a long time ago, I’ve always been told that my strength work needs to always be “low reps, and explosive” to build power I could use on the field. The funny thing is, that I can remember more than a handful of times where I was doing very simple sets of 10-12 rep schemes, or even brutal squat ladders that acutely left me feeling very “springy”, and helped me with a nice boost of athleticism.
Ever since watching Michael Yessis’s 1×20 DVD, and then hearing a wonderful anecdote on how Jay DeMayo of Richmond University used a system based on 1×20 to bring about big gains on a group of basketball players strength and leaping ability, I knew that everything I had been told on the subject was pretty much in question. Comparing this from an awesome and interesting anecdote from Andrew Darqui, on the old ADARQ forum, I knew that I had been tossing an important concept to the wayside for some time. After using the 1×20 system in my own coaching, I found great results across the board, and in some cases, incredible. I’ve seen high rep training both instrumental in bringing stagnant strength gains out of athletes, as well as serving for an ultimate transition and recovery period stimulus between speed-strength blocks.
There isn’t a whole lot of traditional textbook info on this subject, as it relates to athletes (not that information there has always been so useful anyways). To shine more more light on it, we have a roundtable of three phenomenal coaches to help us in our understanding:
- Jay DeMayo: Basketball and swim strength coach at of the University of Richmond. Organizer of the annual Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar.
- Dan John: A veritable Yoda of strength and performance who needs no introduction. Dan is the epitome of the word “wisdom”, when it comes to all things strength.
- Greg Nuckols: Founder of Strengtheory. Greg is one of the smartest and well read young strength and powerlifting coaches in the world, and has some great insights on various forms of training. Greg is the voice of high rep work in regards to the strength/powerlifter athlete, so this offers us some great insight between the outcome goals of the training in regards to the barbell lift, and team sport.
On to the questions.
Coaches Roundtable: High Rep Lifting for Athletic Performance
Just Fly Sports: For athletes, what advantages/disadvantages could high rep (15-25 rep) lifting sets (in the “big” lifts, such as a squat) have versus broken up sets, total volume and intensity being the same? (i.e. what possible advantages could 1×20 have over 2×10, or two ladders of 2,3,5 with the exact same weight?)
Jay DeMayo: First I think we need to look at why Dr. Yessis and Yosef Johnson have told me the importance of starting with 1×20. Those reasons include:
- Increasing the strength of the connective tissue
- Increasing capillary density in the muscle
- High time under tension
- Increasing muscular endurance
All four of those sound like pretty sound starting spots for our off-season work, or as some like to call it, GPP don’t they? It allows you to really prepare the athlete for what is important, but the specialized work comes later in the program. This is usually done in the form of jumps, throws, and exercises against active cords. They have huge carry over to sport performance, but you must prepare the body to be able to handle these high loads.
When we are talking about specific advantages, I think that is really 3-fold:
You are allowing the athlete to actually train at a lower volume than most start at (3×10), but perform more repetitions in a row to help “practice the technique”. This allows them to learn fast, and engrain the skill more.
The longer sets make the athlete use a lesser load. So you’re looking at something like squatting 225 instead of 315-350. That’s a huge decrease on stress and compression forces.
Because it’s less weight and less reps, you’re able to repeat the workout multiple times throughout the week. We will do the same stuff (with some changes to the program based on different things) three times a week in the 1×20. As Willie Danzer said on one of our podcasts, “Do stuff until they stop getting better and then change it.” It summarizes it pretty well.
Now looking at that, people ask all the time “Jay do you get bored? Do the kids get bored?” Let me answer it this way. I’m not here to entertain myself, nor them. I’m here to be part of their development as an athlete and help improve their general sporting skills that have direct carry over to improving their performance in their given sporting exercise. If they want someone to give them a fun workout, then they probably don’t care about training anyway. I give them a program that is results based, and has proven to them time after time that they get better and can still handle practices throughout the off season (that are now “required”).
Dan John: The only advantage I know is what happens “inside.” Finishing a high rep set does something to one’s Free Will, one’s inner lifter. If you can do “this,” you can do a lot of other things. Sure, time under load is a big deal, but so is trying to push one more rep…then one more.
Greg Nuckols: I generally wouldn’t use high rep sets for the big lifts – at least not anywhere close to the time of competition. They’re generally higher risk exercises to perform under fatigue (especially the squat and deadlift), and for people who have already learned the general motor patterns, to continue improving their skill and technique, they should be training the main lifts in the most specific manner possible; I don’t want them doing a ton of lighter, slower, reps (probably with slightly altered technique as fatigue sets in) when they could get the same positive outcomes (hypertrophy and strength endurance) with other exercises.
Just Fly Sports: Is there a particular population of athletes (such as “fast vs. slow twitch”, or “inexperienced vs. experienced”) that a 1-2 sets of 15-20 type rep scheme may work better for than a lower or broken rep approach to hypertrophy?
Jay DeMayo: I think that until an athlete has been in a weight room for a good amount of time, one set is plenty. I know people look at this and think that it’s soft, but once you squat a 20, or bench a 20, or build up to 20 pull ups then you know, you’re working a bit.
I think the better question is, when do they not need this? When do they need more? For us it’s been around year 3 where we have had to intensify some stuff, but we are talking like 1 or 2 exercises for multiple sets not going hog wild with all of it.
Dan John: It tends to help those with around two years of training under the belt. That odd stage where the early gains, those wonderful romantic times when everything works, vanish and you have yet to simply “own” everything for good as in the case of the veteran experienced lifter (I could bench 400 in my prime with basically two weeks of training the lift). So, this is the ONLY route I know.
Greg Nuckols: I think the main issue there is novelty. For someone who hasn’t done any high rep work in a long time, the novelty of the stimulus could be an advantage in the short to medium term.
Just Fly Sports: What are your thoughts on the issue of “specific” muscle hypertrophy of the fast or slow twitch groups, as far as higher repetition sets are concerned? Should athletes fear too much “slow twitch” or “sarcoplasmic hypertrophy” development with this type of work, and can it be useful for power seeking athletes in conjunction with sport or plyometric and speed work? Or is this making the issue more complicated than it needs to be?
Jay DeMayo:
JFS: What are your thoughts on the issue of “specific” muscle hypertrophy of the fast or slow twitch groups, as far as higher repetition sets are concerned?
I think that if that’s a byproduct required you probably won’t know so until later on anyway, so initially it doesn’t really matter. We have to remember, I work with basketball players, and then a few female teams. I’d say 90% of them have never lifted, and of that 10% that have, they have done some sort of Crossfit craziness with either their clubs or at a gym. So once we back them down and teach them how to do things, how to perform the exercises, build special strengths with them, and they get “strong enough” to use more specified exercises (both to the sport and the individual) then we can look at that. It doesn’t happen overnight though.
JFS: Should athletes fear too much “slow twitch” or “sarcoplasmic hypertrophy” development with this type of work, and can it be useful for power seeking athletes in conjunction with sport or plyometric and speed work?
I’d say probably not, because it’s who they are anyway right? There isn’t going to be any sort of huge swing in fiber typing because they’re playing their sport all year round. I’m sure somewhere they were told that aerobic work makes you slow, but when we are running 5 second hills at max effort are they getting slower? It’s aerobic work so they should turn from a team of Greek gods to being sponsored by Unicef right? We know that’s not the case.
I think that anything can be used successfully, it’s a matter of what needs to be given as a does at that time. So, back tracking, let’s look at the components of the program and dissect it and determine that. We know that the volume and intensity are lower than the “typical” beginner program, so we are giving them less stress than we would think of, but we are able to perform the same movements more often because of this lower intensity and volume now allowing the athlete to better learn the skills (lifts) and have the adaptations be more plastic. I think when we look at it in that way, it’s pretty ideal for a new athlete who has a very low training age.
Now getting into the jump progression is a whole different ball game. We won’t start that until later. Typically we don’t start that with the new kids until after a month of the 1×20 because they’ve never trained before so:
1) They don’t need it yet.
2) They’re not prepared for it yet.
Jumps go from skipping (power skips and such), to iso jumps (squat jumps where there is a pause at the bottom), to extensive short coupling exercises, and extensive long coupling exercises. If we get past that, it’s gravy, if we get to true plyometrics then it’s dessert, but we do not progress them past what they need to adapt. Remember, the weight room is assistance work to their sporting exercise, so don’t think that anything we do MUST be done, it’s what SHOULD be done and how much of it is NECESSARY to elicit an adaption to increase sporting performance. That’s it, period, end of story.
JFS: Or is this making the issue more complicated than it needs to be?
Yeah, I think so, at least where I am it is. I’d say greater than 90% of the kids I get have a max training age of 1, and many of them have been in Crossfit box gyms. Looking at fiber types of an 18 year old female swimmer who has never seen a weight room, let alone squatted, is putting the cart WAY before the horse if you ask me. Now, if I was working with your team, and had Olympic champions in the room, I may think of it a bit differently. I may want to look at biopsies and how they are actually “made”, because you got the best of the best rolling around in there. We don’t have that luxury, so I don’t think that’s a necessity for us.
Dan John: Seriously, you are asking me this question? I think most of the words used in this sentence will be laughed at in a decade. So, yes, you are. Stop it. Do six weeks of high reps squats and then reread this nonsense.
Greg Nuckols: That depends on the sport. I mostly train powerlifters, and fiber types don’t matter too terribly much for powerlifting. It’s a maximal force sport, not a maximal power sport, and Type I and Type II fibers have very similar force output capabilities. Type IIs may have a small advantage since the actin and myosin are packed in the fibers a little more densely, and since their relaxation time is a bit faster, but the difference doesn’t outweigh the advantage of simply having more muscle.
Just Fly Sports: Generally speaking (and clearly this will differ by athletic population), what is the maximal length of time a speed and power seeking sport would want to employ a high-repetition scheme of training before seeking an alternative method, if used at all?
Jay DeMayo: If you are training kids who have a low training age, I’d say (use it) as long as you’re still getting better. People (both athletes and coaches) are in such a huge hurry to change things. Why? If you’re getting better and dropping time, or jumping higher, or getting stronger, then why fix what isn’t broken? I think the question that everyone needs to look at more is what are you doing to evaluate performance measures that matter?
Swimming is an awesome example, not just because we both work with them, because we have NO CLUE what the effect of being horizontal in an aqueous solution actually plays on all this. Everyone wants to talk about “jumping off the wall” right? Ok, so you “jump off the wall”, but if you just push like a mad man off the wall what happens? The water slows you down right? So does increasing force output off the wall really matter? Is it all about technique? Like most things it’s probably somewhere in the middle, but how do we prove it? How do we know what we are doing is helping? Do we look at push offs for distance? Underwater 25’s off a turn for time? Sculling? We see tons of jumping, and coaches want to jump all the time, but is there even an amortization phase when they hit the wall? Is there an actual stretch shortening cycle or do they “land” in that squat and just press off? So should we be doing things from a dead stop like deadlifts, squats in the rack, seated jumps? I don’t have those answers, but those are the ones we are trying to find.
Before we look at what we should change in our programs maybe we should look at where does your program help improve performance? How can you evaluate it? When these evaluations stop improving, if you can show they are connected to actual performance, then what changes do you make then? I wish I didn’t just sit here and ask you 20 questions, but I don’t think we have the answers. I really don’t think anyone really knows when it comes to swimming. With land sports we time 10’s, we take verticals, we look at recovery heart rates, we look at speeds and durations of workouts to make sure we are improving. Those things aren’t really hard to track. Swimming is one that we still haven’t even found the tip of the iceberg on though.
Dan John: Oh…if you can go six weeks, you are doing it right. Then…stop. That is plenty. Once…maybe twice a year for a football, collision sport guy…a year is enough. Strive to do it again in a year with more weight. You probably get all you need after three years of this…
Greg Nuckols: Not the athletes I mainly work with, so I don’t have any meaningful input here.
Coaches Bio’s
DeMayo is directly responsible for the strength training, conditioning and flexibility development of the men and women’s basketball teams. He also educates the student-athletes on the proper nutrition to make sure their bodies are performing to their full potential.
Jay has presented at 10 different seminars and clinics in five different states and has coached and lectured for a month at Ningbo University in China. He came to Richmond from Indiana State, where he was a graduate assistant during the 2002-03 academic year. The Fairport, N.Y. native played on the soccer team at SUNY-Cortland.
Dan spends his work life blending weekly workshops and lectures with full-time writing, and is also an online religious studies instructor for Columbia College of Missouri. As a Fulbright Scholar, he toured the Middle East exploring the foundations of religious education systems. His books, on weightlifting, include Intervention, Never Let Go, Mass Made Simple and Easy Strength, written with Pavel Tsatsouline as well as From Dad, To Grad. Recently, he and Josh Hillis co-authored “Fat Loss Happens on Monday.”
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