To Jump Or Not To Jump
To Jump Or Not To Jump:
I was a junior in high school, a young teenage kid, full of himself and the all-powerful knowledge that I thought I had at the time. My weightlifting coach told us one day that we would be doing box jumps instead of lifting. I was pissed! All I could think about all day was throwing some weight around and then I get to class and we have to jump off boxes. Whoever heard of jumping off boxes and that it would lead to a bigger squat? Better yet, who thought it up? I didn’t really care. At that time in my life, I wrote the exercises off as silly and lame. As I look back on that day, I realized that I missed some things that I should have paid attention to.
There is a debate going on and some discussion amongst powerlifters concerning the use of plyometrics in their training programs. Albeit, most lifters are ill-informed about its benefits and decide to put the debate off to others while they go on with their heavy training. If you haven’t thought about jumping, maybe you should.
What exactly is the debate? Well, for one, part of the debate stems around the benefit of plyometrics to powerlifting. Secondly, how do you incorporate plyometric training into your workouts? Let’s take a look at what plyometrics are and how they might benefit your total. After all, that’s the name of the game in this sport.
Plyometrics is the term now used in the United States that originally has its roots in Europe, where it was first known as “jump training.” Plyometrics became rapidly known as exercises and drills to link strength with speed of movement to help increase power. Plyometrics are not only jumping exercises either. There are other exercises done with medicine balls and even resistance used from a partner that don’t involve jumping. Most of these exercises are for abdominal/trunk work or upper body work.
Plyometrics is defined as exercises that enable a muscle to reach maximum strength in as short a time as possible. The ability to overcome a resistance over time is known as power. If you are confused about the difference between strength and power then think of it like this. Two benchers who both max 405 have the same strength. The bencher who benches 405 faster has more power. The faster you overcome a resistance, the more power you have. The more power you have, the bigger total you have!
You might now be thinking of something I wondered about for years until I finally figured it out. What good is power in powerlifting? The only thing that counts in powerlifting is if the lift was made or not, not how fast it was done. And, in part, that’s true. I choose to look at it another way. A lifter who completes a first or second lift with greater power than a lifter who grinded out the same weights on those first two attempts, will most likely get that third difficult lift and the other lifter won’t. Why? Because lifter two spent all their energy overcoming the first two attempts to complete them. The first lifter completed them with less stress and therefore has even more strength and power on the third attempt than his/her competitor. This scenario could even take place on the second attempt as well. If you apply this to the squat, bench and deadlift then you could be talking about a six-attempt advantage. You know what else? A lifter with more power, can overcome missing a lift due to a technical mistake easier than a lifter with inferior power. While there may not be research to support that claim, I believe a lifter with more power will approach lockout faster and therefore can correct mistakes before losing the lift. A lifter with inferior power will have to correct mistakes near the middle of the lift attempt rather than towards the end.
Well now this is all good stuff if only it could help powerlifters be stronger. The fact is, my friend, it can. In my opinion, plyometrics benefit the squat the most of the three lifts, then the deadlift and probably the least would be the bench. Certainly, that could be argued, but I’ll explain myself later.
Picture this experiment with yourself or have a training partner actually help you do it to see for yourself how plyometrics works. Use a box at any height and start by sitting on it. When your partner says “go”, stand up as fast as you can. Have your partner time how long it took you to get off the box and stand up straight. Now repeat the experiment, but this time start standing up, drop down and touch the box, and explode up as fast as possible. Have your partner start the clock as soon as your butt touches the box. The time stops when you stand up straight again. What do you think you will find? No, not a sore butt! You are faster and more explosive if you have that downward movement first-THAT STRETCH. That stretch causes your muscles to react stronger and faster than it would normally by just sitting there. Try different heights of boxes and see what happens to the times you get.
Take the experiment further and with GOOD SPOTTERS. Load a weight of 40% of your contest squat max on the bar and do the same experiment as above, this time with a loaded bar. For a 500 pound squatter, the question would be, does he/she stand up faster sitting on the box with 200 pounds, OR descending, touching and blasting up? Try it yourself and see what happens. The faster a muscle is stretched or lengthened, the greater it’s concentric force after the stretch. (A word of caution here: this is not to say, that descending as fast as you can in a squat will make you stronger. It is true that it will give you a more powerful muscle contraction and reaction than a slower descent, BUT, a faster descent also means the weight you are trying to lift is picking up speed and actually makes it heavier. The trick is to find the right balance).
That brings us to our next group of words you need to know: eccentric and concentric. Eccentric contractions are done while lowering the weight, concentric when raising it. Another way to think of it is like this: eccentric is the muscle under tension while it lengthens, concentric is the muscle under tension while it shortens. Energy is stored in the muscle during the eccentric phase of muscle contraction and is partially recovered during the concentric contraction. The conversion from negative to positive (eccentric to concentric) is described as the amortization phase.
A basic understanding of the amortization phase says that the faster you can change gears from an eccentric to a concentric contraction, the more powerful contraction you will elicit from your muscles. The pause in the bench press lengthens the amortization phase of the lift, therefore, making it more difficult to elicit a higher muscle contraction. The squat is entirely different and the deadlift is in between. Have you seen some deadlifters drop and go? This is why! That drop creates an amortization phase and better muscle contraction and hopefully more power to come up with the weight. A lifter that starts the deadlift in the crouched position removes the amortization phase because there is no change from descent to ascent since all you would be doing is ascending. Are you following this?
How can plyo’s help you in powerlifting? Well, for one, they will raise your general physical preparedness. If you haven’t read Louie Simmons articles on this topic, do it-they’re great! Second, to do them correctly, it will require some flexibility on your part. That might force some of you to stretch. Stretching is good, trust me! Third, for some lifters, it can be a great warm up to heavy training. Fourth, it will train your mind and your muscles to overcome a resistance quicker, thus, making you more powerful!
How do you incorporate plyometrics into your training program. In the next issue, I will give you some exercises to use, some resources to do your own research on the subject and some ideas to incorporate this training into your current training program. Note to readers: are you currently using plyometrics in your training? If you are, email me and tell me how YOU are incorporating them into your training program. (brent_mikesell@hotmail.com)
