This week’s guest is Dr. Bryan Mann of the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Dr. Mann is internationally renowned for his work in the autoregulation of strength training, specifically with Velocity Based Training and the Autoregulatory Progressive Resistance Exercise method (APRE).
I’m really excited to have Dr. Mann on the show today. You could say that this podcast can really be whittled down to one idea: the development of athletic power. Within the realms of developing power for the field of play, the intelligent utilization of barbell velocities is certainly something to invest one’s time in, given the time many athletes spent in the weight room in modern physical preparation.
In discussing bar speed from different performance specialists, from track and field, to powerlifting, to strength and conditioning, you’ll get different opinions across the board. On one end, you have the thought that athletes get all the “speed monitoring” they need out on the track while sprinting and jumping, and don’t need the added “intensification” of monitoring the weight room as well. On the other hand, a good number of truly elite coaches who are producing gold medal athletes (for example, Rana Reider) enjoy using barbell tracking in the weight room. On the show today, I was excited to get Dr. Mann’s take on these variables in building top-end speed and jumping ability.
Bar speed and VBT certainly isn’t the only area of sport performance Dr. Mann is an expert in, and on the show today, we talk about a large number of sports performance topics, such as the neural and muscular adaptations to power training, muscle fiber types and adaptations, squat depth, training and athlete’s strength vs. weaknesses, and more.
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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Key Points:
- Things that Bryan has learned or refined in the last several years in terms of barbell velocity monitoring
- Thoughts on using bar speed monitoring for sports such as track and field where “big rocks” are already being monitored out on the track
- How force adaptations occur on the neural and muscular level
- Approaching training athlete’s strengths vs. weaknesses
- Using bar speed and VBT to train selective hypertrophy
- Muscle fiber types and training adaptations
- Squat depth and angular specificity in light of VBT regulations
- Using average vs. peak velocity for various lifts
- Good VBT tagged lifts for vertical leap enhancement
- Ideas on the use of bar speed tracking in yearly periodization and planning
- Thoughts on complex training
“If it’s indiscriminate hypertrophy you want, I don’t even use the tendo”
“Barbell velocity monitoring is only for the “big rock” type exercises…. On my throwers workout I had 3 exercises that utilized velocity”
“Squatting is a general means for a sprinter”
“The group that received the (bar speed) feedback (on only the squat jump, one exercise in an entire weekly training program) saw far greater adaptations (than the group who had no feedback)”
“(In working with throwers) To be blunt, the greater the (bar) velocity, the farther the throws were”
“I don’t like getting tied down to exercises like I used to…. The more I look at things from the 35,000 foot view, it’s more about the specificity than the general. Don’t get me wrong, there is a need for GPP, but there is a time for more specific work to be implemented”
“There’s two force adaptations on the muscle side and two on the neural side. On the neural side you got Henneman’s size principle, where you’re preferentially recruiting high threshold motor units, and you got rate coding, which is what velocity based training really helps with, with the intra and intermuscular coordination” “All four things to maximize force production and transfer need to be in the program”
“If you need the super, ultra high speed, you need adaptations of the sarcoplasmic reticulum (related to the release and reabsorption of calcium), and rate coding is not going to help with that”
“Let’s say we have great rate coding, in the weightroom we look fast, on the track we look slow, well, sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium release and reabsorption is where we tend to be having an issue, and guess what, the only way to enhance that is sprinting, because no other activity is going to be that fast. The impulse forces at top end speed are going to be anywhere from 64 to 100 milliseconds, it’s a very brief impulse force”
“Sprinting would be sarcoplasmic reticulum, rate coding for intra and intermuscular use VBT, you got traditional resistance training for myofibrillar, and max effort work for Henneman’s size principle”
“We gotta make sure we keep athlete’s strength their strength, and then bring up their weaknesses”
“The smaller the (velocity) drop-off (in a lifting set), the better for the Type II (fast-twitch) adaptations”
“I know skinny dudes who are slow twitch… they get bigger with volume”
“We know that doing things with feedback makes you more explosive”
“In a lift where you are in control of the acceleration and deceleration, squats, bench press, etc. The mean velocity gives the best reflection of what the load should be. Whenever you are dealing with ballistics, where gravity is dealing with the deceleration of the barbell, peak velocity is the best”
“You need to hit those myofibril adaptations first, then come in with Henneman’s size principle, then the rate coding, then the sarcoplasmic reticulum.”
“I recommend Gymaware above everything else because of X-Axis correction”
About Bryan Mann
Bryan Mann started his career at the University of Missouri Department of Physical Therapy in 2012. Before this, he served as a strength & conditioning coach at the University of Missouri since 2004, and before that at Arizona State University, University of Tulsa, and Missouri State University. Mann is internationally renowned for his work in autoregulation of strength training, specifically with Velocity Based Training and the Autoregulatory Progressive Resistance Exercise method (APRE).
Mann splits his time between teaching, researching in sports performance enhancement, working as the Research Director for the Human Performance Institute, and working as the Director for Performance Research with the Department of Athletics
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