The importance of explosive training

Although this debate doesn’t seem to come up as often as it used to, there are still a lot of people interested in explosive training.

When Westside was the biggest game in town and everyone and their brother thought bands and chains were necessary for getting strong (i.e. before Youtube dropped the hundreds of videos of ridiculously strong Russians in our laps, with the subtle message of “LOL at your silly Americans and your accommodating resistance.”), it seemed like “explosive training,” and “rate of force development” were as big of buzzwords in powerlifting as “bosu” and “functional” were in the general fitness industry.

Although the pendulum seems to have swung back towards the middle, there are still plenty of people wondering if they should do explosive training in light of the fact that so many people are apparently getting big and strong without it.

1.  The athlete

Most athletes definitely need to engage in some sort of explosive training.  The reason for this is that most sports are not unidirectional.  Instead of just lifting a weight straight up, or running in a straight line, most sporting performance requires the ability to decelerate, change directions, and be agile in different planes.

The force necessary to reverse a heavy squat (or even a squat with bands) is nowhere near the force necessary to decelerate from a full sprint, plant on one foot, and change directions abruptly.  For this reason, athletes should include some plyometrics in their training in the planes of movement most crucial for the sport and specific to the cuts and maneuvers they will most likely have to make or that they are having the most trouble with.  Specificity is king.  Performing well on the field is about transferring the strength you build in the gym to the movement demands of your sport.  Targeted plyometric training is a very good way to bridge gym strength and playing ability.

Plain old slow strength shouldn’t be neglected, though.  In sports, the “load” you’re dealing with is your own bodyweight.  Being able to squat or pull heavier weights effectively decreases the effort necessary to manage and maneuver your body.  To use an analogy, the effect on your sprinting or agility of adding a few hundred pounds to your squat is like the difference between throwing a baseball for distance vs. throwing a bowling ball for distance.  The stronger you are relative to your bodyweight, the “lighter” you are on the field.  There is a point of diminishing returns, though.  An athlete squatting and pulling double bodyweight should be a good landmark to shoot for.  It’s debatable how much additional benefit a 3x bodyweight squat and deadlift would be.

2.  The powerlifter

For powerlifters, the answer isn’t so straight forward.  The additional force required to change directions for a squat or deadlift with bands COULD, theoretically, make someone a better lifter by decreasing the amortization phase (how long it takes to reverse the weight between the eccentric and concentric portions of the lifts).  However, I don’t think that’s likely, assuming no major sticking points, based on what causes muscular fatigue.

For powerlifting, acute fatigue shouldn’t really be an issue on the platform.  The energy system powering 1rm attempts is the anaerobic alactic system.  Basically, your body uses stored ATP, and then it uses the high energy phophates from stores phosphcreatine (which replinishes ATP so it can be rapidly used again).  These two energy stores account for 10-12 seconds of energy at maximum intensity before energy output starts diminishing.  Now, if you’re grinding a deadlift for 26 seconds, that may be an problem, however, one SHOULD be able to sustain maximal force output long enough to grind out any lift before fatigue becomes an issue.

Start watching at 4:40

The argument for explosive training for powerlifters typically revolves around the notion that being able to activate more motor units, more quickly, should result in faster summation of force output.  While that may be entirely true, the issue, again, returns to ability of your anaerobic alactic energy system to provide fuel for maximum force output.  Even if you summated force INCREDIBLY slowly (let’s say it took you 3 seconds to reach peak force output), and you took your time lowering the weight (let’s say 3 seconds for the eccentric), you should still have enough ATP/PCr to grind a lift for 4-6 seconds which is a LONG time.

However, the argument of developing speed at the bottom of a lift to help get through a sticking point may be more valid.  If you’re weaker through a certain range of motion, acceleration will be less through that ROM relative to preceding and proceeding ranges in the lift.  If there’s enough speed from the ROM preceding the sticking point, the speed developed before the sticking point could be enough to carry through the sticking point an spite of the bar slowing (negative acceleration due to decreased force output).

So, if you’re a lifter and you have a noticeable sticking point that is NOT at the very bottom ROM (i.e. getting buried in the hole on squats, not moving the bar off your chest on bench, and not breaking the bar off the ground for deadlifts), some explosive training, whether it be plyometrics or accommodating resistance may help with motor unit recruitment and bar speed going into the sticking point, and therefore your ability to make it though your sticking point.

The last thing to consider – if you have Olympic lifts in your program, you’re probably covered in terms of exlosiveness in the sagittal plane, regardless of sporting/lifting goals.

Honestly though, 99% of it is just lifting heavy stuff repeatedly.  Explosive training is the other 1%