Sometimes, athletes may be wondering what the best way to end their strength training might be. In years past, the typical way a strength training session will end is with the performance of a burnout set or some single joint exercises….. maybe some abdominal training and some stretching. Most workouts these days for athletes will tend to follow a pattern like this:
- Warmup
- Speed
- Plyometrics
- Strength Training
- Core/Abs
- Stretching
Although this is a physiologically accurate setup, there does happen to be one thing wrong here: The last dynamic exercises done in the session were all slow. Practical experience among top coaches has shown that the human body will enter a new workout “remembering” the last stimulus it took on in the last workout it completed (not talking about/including recovery work such as stretching, however). If you ended your last workout with a few sets of box jumps or explosive skips, your body will now be tuned to that fast stimulus entering your next workout. If you ended your last workout with a slow burnout set of squats, then your body is going to remember that slow stimulus when you step out on the track or the weightroom for your next workout, and you will probably feel a bit sluggish the next time you work out.
This is not to say it is all bad to do slow work in the weightroom, just remember to finish your lifting session off with something fast and dynamic so that your body will take that into the next workout you do. Examples of some finishing exercises that coaches might use after strength training would be box jumps or several light striding sprints over distances of around 100 meters. Although I don’t have specific references on this article, I have heard from several reputable sources the benefits of a “fast finish”, and have seen its effects in my own training and the training of my athletes. In one particular training setup I write, Monday and Tuesday are strength training days, and Tuesday/Friday are speed/plyometric days. Athletes sometime wonder how it is possible to comeback from strength training in 24 hours and perform a plyometric session, and part of the reason that this is possible is due to ending those strength training workouts with a fast or dynamic exercise to lead the body into the speed/plyo workout the next day. Try ending your next strength workout with something fast, and find how big the difference is in your following workout!
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