I love lifting heavy. Heavy squat, deadlift, bench press, cleans, snatches and overhead press are regularly in my repertoire for myself, my personal training clients, and my high school athletes.
I love doing plyometrics. Jumps, throws, slams, sprints. I program, and see them programmed, for athletes all the time.
But not all coaches do Contrast Training -- putting weight lifting and plyometrics together to develop athletic MONSTERS. This type of training develops fast twitch muscle fibers -- the fibers that make great athletes.
While lifting heavy gives tons of benefit, like building muscle, increasing strength, increasing bone density, and increasing resilience of ligaments and tendons.
ONLY lifting heavy doesn't necessarily transition to moving FAST. Yes, lifting makes you faster because you can displace force better, HOWEVER...
The body knows how to move fast in two different ways. Through muscle fibers and also through neurological speed.
First, muscle fibers. These can be complex with differences in types of fibers, but let's lump them in two categories -- fast twitch and slow twitch.
For most any human, fast twitch muscles have lots of advantages. They are more resilient, respond to training better, burn more calories, and are less likely to store carbs as fat. The more we can encourage the body to grow fast twitch fibers or convert slow fibers to fast, the more these advantages will be their constant metabolic condition.
So, how do we train the body to develop these fibers? By moving FAST and for a SHORT DURATION.
Moving fast can be with your body or with weights or some type of implement.
Developing Fast Twitch with Weights
There are two ways to do this. I'm going to use Bulgarian Split Squat as an example (because I prefer this single leg squat variation for my athletes over the double leg squat).
TYPE ONE: Light and fast -- You can do 8 - 12 FAST reps here. You have just enough weight on there that your driving out of the hole of the squat is almost like a jump, but the weight is enough that you won't leave the ground or barely leave the ground. You can spend time recovering between reps if you want to to make sure you're in a good position.
TYPE TWO: Heavy and fast intent -- This is 1-3 reps FAST reps here. The key here is speed INTENT. You are trying to move as fast as possible and the muscles are firing HARD to make it happen, but the weight just isn't allowing the speed to happen, but that doesn't mean you're not building speed. A key for these is taking a hot second between reps to fully brace the body. Big breath, BRACE, load up the eccentric under control, then BIG DRIVE out of the hole. This is why Louie Simmons and Westside Barbell Conjugate Methods helped revolutionize sports performance in the 90's. They were applying FIERCE INTENT to their lifting and this made their athletes faster and more resilient.
Body weight speed training
Think of these as traditional plyometric training -- jumps, bounds, sprints. They're great at building durability of lower body but unfortunately aren't used as often in the upper body (especially upper body pull (especially, especially upper body ROTATION)). The variability on these are endless.
For lower body plyos, I see a lot of hurdle hops and box jumps and depth drops (and those are great!!), but I like to add in different leg positions -- split stance, single leg, landing after having rotated in the air. Sport requires durable soft tissue, and that means exposing the body to falling/landing in ways other than perfectly forward.
For upper body plyo metrics, explosive push ups are great to develop fast twitch speed, but there are other options such as band assisted push ups, overhead med ball throws, isometrics overhead holds, explosive rows, band assisted pull ups, fast rotational moves with a quick stop.
Med Ball Training for Explosiveness
I'm a big fan of med ball training. They force the body to work in an extremely dynamic way to move objects quick -- it builds coordination, improved pressure system control, full body processing of information, finding and creating leverage to achieve MAX speed.
Another great aspect of them, virtually anyone can use them. I love using them with my youth athletes and some of my older clients who need to develop POWER.
contrast training for the win
When I'm coaching my youth basketball, youth wrestlers, baseball players, or any other sport, my supersets ALWAYS have one contrast training.
We go from something heavy with an intent of moving fast to something light actually moving fast. Or vice versa.
These motions force the body to adapt physiologically and neurologically to move faster. The more the body develops these fast neurological connections, the faster they'll be on the field, the more resilient their tissue will be, the leaner and more dense their muscles will be. There are tons and tons of benefits from this type of training.
Here is an example from my training just this week. In one, I go from a heavy back squat to a band RESISTED jump and in the next I go from a heavy bulgarian split squat to band ASSISTED jumps with changing foot position.
After I did these, my body was FIRED up. I was sweating pretty good! My legs felt ALIVE, not tired and sloggy like I just did a horrible leg day. My feet felt super activated meeting the demands of the explosive jumps. My knees and ankles felt strong and stable.
In a sense, I felt like I could carry this training over to a basketball court and dunk or to a football field and run someone over.
This is how I want my athletes to feel. Unstoppable. And with contrast training, the odds of them being the best on the field dramatically increase. Below these videos you'll see my athletes going from a heavy front squat to a FAST dumbbell snatch.