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coolcolj
New member
There are arguments either way. I found this article which is unbiased and it makes sense to me, from my own experiences I have found that my own explosive lifting has had disappointing effect on my day to day functional strength in lifting heavy things at work and so on. Whereas in jumping, sprinting and throwing things, I have noticed a nice improvements.
I have used superslow routines in the past and they certainly help across the board as in the article, in both slow and fast movements. They train the muscle and not the nerves and movement. I think I will go back to slow training for the normal exercises and keep the fast ones to the Jump snatches and jump squats
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Medline® Abstract "To examine the importance of resistance training movement speed, two groups of women (24 +/- 4 years, 162 +/- 5 cm, 59 +/- 7 kg) squatted repeatedly at 1) 2 seconds up, 2 seconds down (slow, N = 11); or 2) 1 second up, 1 second down (fast, N = 10), doing three warm-up sets and three eight-repetition maximum sets, three times per week for 7 weeks.
Tests included force platform and video analysis of the vertical jump, long jump, and maximum squat, and isometric and isokinetic knee extensor testing at speeds from 25 to 125 deg/sec.
The groups improved similarly in many variables with training but also showed some differences. In the long jump, the fast group was superior in numerous variables including knee peak velocity and total-body vertical and absolute power. In the vertical jump, fast training affected the ankle and hip more (e.g., average power), and slow training mostly affected the knee (average torque). In isokinetic testing, the fast group improved strength most at the faster velocities, while the slow group strength changes were consistent across the velocities tested.
Although both slow and fast training improved performance, faster training showed some advantages in quantity and magnitude of training effects."
My Comments: At first glance this study may look like a real thumbs up for plyometrics and fast contraction training and a real thumbs down for slow rep training. However, a closer look reveals that this is not the case. Note that the fast group improved strength only at the faster velocities. The slow group improved at all velocities tested.
Some may argue that this improvement in the fast group was due to a selective hypertrophy of fast twitch fibers. This cannot be the case. If there was hypertrophy of fast twitch fibers (or any hypertrophy at all) there would have been an improvement in torque at the slow velocities as well. There was not in the fast group. In the slow group, however, there was an improvement in strength at all velocities. This is strong evidence of true muscle hypertrophy.
Bigger muscles would be better at producing force at all velocities. Why was the fast group better at the long jump and the high jump. It was not due to an increase in muscle. It was due to motor learning. In this case getting better at rapidly recruiting a large number of muscle fibers simultaneously. Perhaps they might have seen big improvements in the high jump and long jump in the slow training group if they would have had the slow group practice these jumps explosively and continue to train with slow reps. This way they would have had the bennefit of muscle hypertrophy (from the slow velocity training) and the motor learning effects from the jumping practice.
I have used superslow routines in the past and they certainly help across the board as in the article, in both slow and fast movements. They train the muscle and not the nerves and movement. I think I will go back to slow training for the normal exercises and keep the fast ones to the Jump snatches and jump squats
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Medline® Abstract "To examine the importance of resistance training movement speed, two groups of women (24 +/- 4 years, 162 +/- 5 cm, 59 +/- 7 kg) squatted repeatedly at 1) 2 seconds up, 2 seconds down (slow, N = 11); or 2) 1 second up, 1 second down (fast, N = 10), doing three warm-up sets and three eight-repetition maximum sets, three times per week for 7 weeks.
Tests included force platform and video analysis of the vertical jump, long jump, and maximum squat, and isometric and isokinetic knee extensor testing at speeds from 25 to 125 deg/sec.
The groups improved similarly in many variables with training but also showed some differences. In the long jump, the fast group was superior in numerous variables including knee peak velocity and total-body vertical and absolute power. In the vertical jump, fast training affected the ankle and hip more (e.g., average power), and slow training mostly affected the knee (average torque). In isokinetic testing, the fast group improved strength most at the faster velocities, while the slow group strength changes were consistent across the velocities tested.
Although both slow and fast training improved performance, faster training showed some advantages in quantity and magnitude of training effects."
My Comments: At first glance this study may look like a real thumbs up for plyometrics and fast contraction training and a real thumbs down for slow rep training. However, a closer look reveals that this is not the case. Note that the fast group improved strength only at the faster velocities. The slow group improved at all velocities tested.
Some may argue that this improvement in the fast group was due to a selective hypertrophy of fast twitch fibers. This cannot be the case. If there was hypertrophy of fast twitch fibers (or any hypertrophy at all) there would have been an improvement in torque at the slow velocities as well. There was not in the fast group. In the slow group, however, there was an improvement in strength at all velocities. This is strong evidence of true muscle hypertrophy.
Bigger muscles would be better at producing force at all velocities. Why was the fast group better at the long jump and the high jump. It was not due to an increase in muscle. It was due to motor learning. In this case getting better at rapidly recruiting a large number of muscle fibers simultaneously. Perhaps they might have seen big improvements in the high jump and long jump in the slow training group if they would have had the slow group practice these jumps explosively and continue to train with slow reps. This way they would have had the bennefit of muscle hypertrophy (from the slow velocity training) and the motor learning effects from the jumping practice.
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