Knowing the difference between training strength and speed on similar or unique days could be the plateau-busting knowledge you have been missing out on.
I know I wish I would have learned it years before I actually stumbled upon the answer.
Learning the basics of athletic power training is a pretty easy venture. If you aren’t up to speed, I’ll even save you the time:
- Training specificity and intensity are the number one points to address in improving speed and power. Train specifically and at high intensity to improve your ability.
- Strength training is important to improve intra and inter-muscular coordination and timing, as well as to improve muscle size and strength in key areas. It is an assistance training means, however, and not the primary route to speed and power gains.
- Plan a training progression that matches your work capacity and recovery levels.
In addition to the above, do your research, get some good training books, avoid the scammers, and spend some time talking and asking questions to experienced coaches. Along the way, you’ll also learn that training environment and motivation are nearly as important as the training program an athlete is on in terms of results.
You’ll also realize that the circus act, special strength exercise that “so and so” athlete does to improve their vertical leap, such as running with feet in buckets of water, or squatting bands on a platform with a ridiculous force time curve, etc. are more or less marketing garbage, designed to help someone or other get rich.
When we get beyond these basic concepts is where the clear view of training can start to get a little grey. Some of the more complex questions that arise when designing training are as follows:
- What ratio of speed to strength work should I do? How does this change through my season/career?
- What percentage of my 1 rep max should I primarily train with in barbell work?
- Which set and rep schemes should I use to complement my speed work?
- What type of weekly training setup should I utilize?
- What type of monthly training setup should I utilize?
- How often should I deload?
- What aspects of my training should I monitor?
- How often should I switch exercises?
- Should I train speed and strength on the same, or different days?
These are all tough questions, and ones that a 50 page Ebook can’t answer for everyone in a clear path. It takes a lot of time and experience to adequately address them for a spectrum of athletes.
In order to chip away at the complexity, it is good to address the questions one at a time. I tackled the last question in the list (training speed and strength on the same/different days) in a recent video I made in response to a question I was asked on our facebook page, and want to expand on that concept in article format to bring a bit more clarity to this important aspect of training.
I think that the right answer to this question is one that can revolutionize one’s training efforts. This is because speed and strength are two entities that can complement, or take away from each other, depending on the circumstance. Knowing how to arrange them properly in training can make a good training program better, and a great program a channel to one’s highest potential!
If you haven’t seen it, in the video below, I talk about the difference between speed and strength training.
I want to expand on the concepts in this video to help give coaches and athletes a clearer picture of the concepts in the video. First off, let’s chat about the principle of specific fatigue. It goes kind of like this:
In any workout, whether based on speed, strength or endurance, there are multiple different types of residual general and specific fatigue effects that each take a different amount of time to recover from. Each type of fatigue also has a different negative (or even positive, in the case of potentiation) impact on subsequent workouts.
The general types of fatigue that build up from routine workouts are either
- CNS Fatigue (acquired from high intensity lifting, sprinting or jumping)
- Muscular Fatigue (acquired from high, or rapidly increased training volume)
- Endocrine (Adrenal) Fatigue (builds up from lots of endurance work, or even chronic life stress. If you are training for anything shorter than a 5k, and haven’t worked 80 hours a week for the last 10 years, then I doubt you will even need to think about this. If you take 3 scoops of “pre” before every workout though……)
Depending on the type of workout you did (high intensity, or big volume), the amount of each type of fatigue will be a bit different, as well as how long it will take you to recover from. If you did a heavy-ass squat workout early in the week, your body is going to respond better to a higher volume, lighter weight squat workout later in the weight than another heavy-ass workout, because the types of fatigue from each workout are counter-balanced.
You don’t want to stack the fatigue from lifting max weights on top of itself within each weekly program!
This is just one example of how “undulating” training setups, which feature different intensity and volume specs throughout the week are superior to just doing the same sets and reps each training day. (A great article on this was written by Greg Nuckols, I would suggest checking it out)
Implications for Strength and Speed Setups: The magic of “subtle fatigue pathways”
With any exercise, or movement, there are subtle fatigue channels that build up outside of the blanket “CNS Fatigue” or “Muscular Fatigue”. These “low-profile” fatigue channels are the key to effective intermediate, advanced and elite level training. The quieter fatigue channels are as follows:
- Speed work (subtly trains sprint pathway, eccentric muscle adaptations, as well as glutes, hamstrings and hip flexors). Creates greater fatigue in shallower joint ranges of motion.
- Plyometric work (subtly (or not so subtly) trains anti-gravity pathway, eccentric muscle adaptations, glutes, calves and quads). Creates greater fatigue in shallower joint ranges of motion.
- Strength work focuses on concentric muscle contractions, and often creates specific fatigue in deeper joint ranges of motion.
I’ll give you a quick example of the interplay between these types of fatigue. Last summer, I was doing a powerlifting program, featuring a workout with over 60 total reps of back and front squat. Needless to say, 2 days later, my legs were completely fried. I avoided squatting past 90 degrees whenever possible, and sitting up was a chore. I also was coaching at a youth track and field club, a big part of which was demonstrating drills and jumps. Although the fact that I getting up from my chair was on relatively the same plane as getting branded with a hot iron, I was still able to demonstrate the sprinting and jumping drills without a problem.
The reason for this is that the motor pathways and muscle phases associated with sprinting and jumping (done in shallow joint angles) isn’t the same as squatting deep. Also, since the squat workout was more repetition based, it didn’t crush my CNS, which kept me fresh on my feet for demonstrating sprint and jump movements. This is similar throughout the training week (although I wouldn’t recommend that sprinter/jumper athletes seek training programs that has them doing 60+ reps of squats in a session.
The key here is that the specific fatigue of strength work can have a minimal interference (and vice versa) with subsequent jump training sessions, due to the motor pathways that are involved.
Implications for Strength and Speed Training Combinations
In my experience there are two primary ways to train for improving speed and power:
- Train (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) or (Monday,Thursday) with strength and speed emphasized in each session.
- Train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday alternating strength and speed based days.
Of course, there are MANY variations of these types of basic setups (literally, almost infinite), but these are the two that most people will use, and build off of in terms of which training goes on which day. I don’t think that either setup is necessarily “better” than the other, and deciding which to use really depends on the athlete and training goals will help a coach (or athlete) to decide on what is best.
Whatever setup is used, it must keep in mind the effect of specific training fatigue. This means that in a MWF combined setup, Wednesday is often a low intensity or low volume training day compared to Monday or Friday. Also, Monday and Friday should have unique intensities (and often exercise variations) in respect to each other in this setup.
“Separating strength and speed stimuli can keep specific subtle fatigues well balanced in the course of a training week, the slow and steady increase of general CNS fatigue is indicated by the trendline”
In a unique strength and speed setup, a lot of the specific fatigue distribution is taken care of by only lifting twice a week, and only going hard on speed/power twice a week. You will see a lot more repetition in these types of programs than other training systems. Regardless, Monday and Thursday are both strength days, but they will usually feature subtly different exercises. Same deal with Tuesday and Friday, they are both speed oriented, but will often feature subtly different modes of skill acquisition.
More to come!
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article, coming soon, which covers the pro’s and con’s of combined or separate strength and speed weekly setups, as well as how to determine which type of program is best suited for your own training needs!
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