Today’s podcast welcomes back coach Christian Thibaudeau to the podcast. Christian has been a strength coach for nearly 2 decades, working with athletes from nearly 30 sports. He has written four books and has pioneered multiple educational courses, including the Neuro-typing system, which goes in-depth on how to train athletes in the weight room (and beyond) based on their own individual dispositions.
Christian has been a 4-time prior guest on the podcast, and is a true wealth of information. Our recent episode, #208, had lots of great information about the topic of adrenaline as an over-training marker, as well as how to manage this hormone in the course of programming and the workout session. One thing that I had hoped to cover on that episode, but missed out on due to time constraints, was to get into Christian’s take on using the 3-muscle phases (concentric, isometric, eccentric) in training athletes.
Emphasizing various muscle phases in training is certainly nothing new. My own training design for athletes is often based on a hybrid of 14-day squat cycles, along with elements of the “Triphasic Training” system. Christian has been using rep-style emphasis in his programming for two decades, and has loads of practical ideas and training examples that can help us get a better understanding of these methods. You won’t find a more comprehensive episode out there on training using various contraction types than this one, as well as how each type fits into the individual characteristics and response of each athlete.
Finally, although not required, I’d recommend you check out episode 77 with Christian, which is a tremendous overview of the 5 different types of athlete according to their response and preference to training means and methods.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
7:20 Why Christian is not going to write a book on golf training
14:05 Christian’s views on “alternative” forms of training, i.e. bodyweight, gymnastics, macebells, etc.
18:05 How the emphasis of “omni-reps” change when working with athletes vs. general population, and those simply interested in increasing strength and muscle size
24:20 How to approach hypertrophy training for athletes in regards to the neural intensity of exercises
30:35 Using all three types of muscle contractions in the same training week, versus using a single-mode and changing it every 2-3 weeks
39:20 Why you don’t need to train all three types of contractions to the same degree, in advanced athletes, versus novice and intermediate athletes
49:50 Particular phase of contraction methods that are most effective in regards to the three phases of muscle contraction
58:20 Dosage of advanced lifting methods in regards to adrenaline and neuro-type of the athlete
How plyometrics can complement or replace other phase-training methods in the process of the training cycle
“I have a lot of respect for strength coaches working with rotational athletes, it’s a very big challenge”
“Sometimes we do pure isometrics, but most of the time we do stato-dynamic contractions, which means we include pauses at various positions of the rep”
“With average people just wanting to look better, I moved more towards a body-part, antagonistic split (chest-biceps one day/quad-hamstring another day); the main difference is that with average people who just want to gain muscle, we train all three contractions in the same workout”
“The reason (for not doing all three modes of contraction in the same workout) is that athletes do other stuff than lifting; they are going to be sprinting, doing conditioning and practicing their sport. You want to keep neurological resources available you do not want to burn out your adregenergic receptors. People who just want to gain muscle; they don’t have that limitation normally”
“If athletes, if I want to include isolation work, it would be on the 4th workout of the week, I call the ‘gap workout.’ So if an athlete needs more size, we might do hypertrophy work there using very low stress exercises”
“For athletes, trying to increase hypertrophy using big compound lifts, I think, is stupid. When you want to add more tissue to your frame, don’t use more neurological stress”
“You don’t have to make every single exercise functional in the training of an athlete, you must ask yourself why you are doing the exercise”
“It will always be better to put emphasis on all three types of contractions, then just doing all reps normally”
“Fast neural adaptations are gained in two weeks, but they are also lost in two weeks; you would need to stay with a certain type of contraction longer than two weeks for maximal results, in my opinion”
“Slow eccentrics has been shown to increase activation of the motor cortex, which facilitates motor learning, and also improves coordination between the involved muscle. It will also increase tendon strength”
“My main goal is to produce high force, at high speeds, at each type of contraction”
“You can have a stretch reflex at any angle in a movement; each muscle fiber is actually a composite of several micro-fibers, connected as a chain together, and connected by a micro-tendon”
“(Using the stretch reflex in an exercise) is more neurologically demanding than going slow the whole way”
“The harder your brain needs to work, the more adrenaline you need to produce”
“My last preparation set (warmup set) I want to be at the same weight as my first work set, or even higher, but with lower reps. Some people will respond really well to doing a single with more weight than the first work set, some people will not do well with that”
“I moved to the RPE system about a year and a half ago… I was great at setting the proper weight for an athlete just looking at how they are lifting, and when programming for a distance athlete, I can’t do that. The RPE is the best way to program for distance/online athletes”
“Most athletes should not go above an RPE of 8 in a big compound lift. I like to stick with an RPE of 7 or 8 for the work set”
“In training, athletes should never train ‘on the nerve’”
“How much does your heart rate increase leading up to your set/workout? (An important measure of adrenaline/anxiety that diminishes from your ability to recover)”
“The more complex a workout is, the more adrenaline you need”
“The more you practice a certain lift, the less demanding it becomes on the nervous system”
“If you are training for power (absent of heavy barbell training), you will not lose muscle strength for at least 6 weeks. Just because a lift goes down, doesn’t mean your muscles are weaker”
About Christian Thibaudeau
Christian Thibaudeau has been involved in the business of training for over the last 18 years. During this period, he worked with athletes from 28 different sports. He has been “Head Strength Coach” for the Central Institute for Human Performance (official center of the St. Louis Blues).
His specialty: being a generalist. He assists his athletes to develop the necessary qualities to increase their performances (eg: muscle mass, power, explosiveness, coordination). His work method enabled him to lead several successful athletes in a multitude of different disciplines.
Christian is a prolific writer with three books published, each of which translated into three languages (The Black Book of Training Secrets, Theory and Application of Modern Strength and Power Methods, High Threshold Muscle Building). In addition, Christian is co-author with Paul Carter in a new book, which will soon be released. He is also the author of two DVDs (Cluster Training, Mechanical Drop Sets).
Christian is also a senior author and head writer for the E-Magazine T-Nation his articles are read by over 200,000 people every week.
He competed in weightlifting at the national level as well as bodybuilding, He was also a football coach for 8 years.
As a lecturer, he has given conferences and seminars in both the United States and Europe, to audiences ranging from amateur athletes to health professionals and coaches of all types.
Christian Thibaudeau popularized the Neurotyping system. Neural optimization supersedes hormonal optimization because the neural response affects the hormonal response. This is essentially the founding principle and inspiration behind Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurotyping System. The bottom line is simple: you are more likely to train hard, be focused, and stay motivated if you like the type of training you are doing, and a training that goes against your nature causes a greater stress response that hinders optimal progression. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
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