Workout of the Week #17

Welcome to workout of the week number 17.

This time we have a 3-day mixed method power training approach.

What is mixed method?

Schlumberger Schmidtbleicher, two german guys had this so-called ‘Schnellkraft Methoden Kombination’, basically this is just the German name. Essentially it’s a combination of different methods, therefore it’s called mix method approach and what they did is, they did research and from that research they derived a training program.

And it says on day one this is, what they did in the research they had a maximal effort, there they did a three RM Bench Press, on day two they had a ballistic effort, they did the Bench Throws with 30% of the 1 RM, and on day three there was the plyometric effort, where they did clapping push-ups.

And then they compared different Power training methods and found that this method is one of the most successful methods to develop power. And this is from a presentation I followed from Dr. Nic Gill from the All Blacks and they use a similar approach in their periodization.

So what’s the training goal?

We want to maximize power and explosiveness. Our training the training variables, we have different training intensities, you just saw in the mixed method table, so day one the maximum effort we use 87.5 92.5% of the 1 RM.  On day two 10 to 30% and then day three 0 to 5% .

So, we have the max effort on day one, the ballistic effort on day two, and we have the plyometric effort on day three.

The rep ranges on day one, we do 1 to 3 repetitions, day two 3 to 5 repetitions, and day three 4 to 6 repetitions. As I said, the exertion is hard to near-maximum on the first day, and light to medium on day two and day three.

The training effort on day one, a maximum effort, on day two a ballistic effort and on day three  a plyometric effort.

If we have a look at the exercises, and you’ll see that once we look inside the program, on day one we use Olympic lifts, squatting, pushing and pulling. And on day two and three we use jump and throw variations. The exercise order goes from most complex to least complex.

And if we look at more training variables, we do it for three days in a week. It’s a station training and includes some complexes. The training split is a full body split.

So how does it look?

Let’s have a look inside the program.

So here we are inside of our program, once you download it you get an overview of the training program and the weekly overview. So it’s three days a week on non-consecutive days, you can already see here, how we how I have structured it and we have workout one the contrast loading, workout two is the ballistic loading, and workout three the plyometric loading.

And if you have been sharp, you will see that in a minute that I slightly changed the original mixed method approach, because we use contrasts. And what we use is the so-called contrast that want to elicit a PAP, post activation potentiation effect.

Essentially it’s a heavy load combined with a light load. Most often it’s a heavy lift followed by a jump or a throw. We’ll look into that in a second. Here we are with our workout one the contrast loading, so you see 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B these are the complexes, the contrast, and then we do a power clean followed by medicine ball scoop.

If you have followed previous programs I’ve outlined the idea of exercise they are biomechanically similar so the power clean and the scoop are biomechanically very similar. The same is true for the back squat and the box jumps and the bench press and the power drop and the pull-up and the slam. So they are biomechanically similar, but if you look at at the force velocity curve they sit at different ends of the continuum.

So within the complex, 2 minutes of rest at the end of the complex 3 minutes of rest. Let’s have a look at the intensities, so 3 sets of 3 reps with 87.5% for the power clean and then 3 sets of 4 with 2%.

Same here 2% of what?

If you have follow previous videos, I’ve outlined the idea of a parent exercise so the power clean is the parent exercise of the medicine ball scoop. So imagine you can power clean 100 kilos you would use a 2 kilo medicine ball, imagine you can power clean200 kilos you would use a 4 kilo medicine ball. That’s how it works.

The next complex the back squat and the box jumps, the same here, 3 sets of 3 reps at 87.5% and then box jumps are done with the body weight, so that’s why there’s no percentage. And then the Bench press and the power drop, so we do our 3 sets of 3 at 87.5% and the three sets of 4 at 2%. Again the parent exercise for the power drop is the bench press, so if you bench press 100 kilos you take a 2 kilo medicine ball. And then the last one, pull-ups and medicine ball slam. And then we can see here 3 sets of 3 at 87.5% and 3 sets of 4 at 2%.

How do we calculate the 2%? So it’s your body weight plus the weight that additional weight that you’re using, the so-called system mass. So again if we make it easy for ourselves, imagine you weigh 75 kilos and you use 25 of additional load, the 1 RM is 100 kilos, the system mass. So the medicine ball slam would be done with 2 kilos, 2% of 100.

So workout number two, the ballistic loading. So, this time we have complexes, you see 1A, 1B, and 2A, 2B. And we do the scoop and the bench throw. So again here we use kind of an antagonistic approach, so the scoop is very different move movement pattern than the bench throw, and then we do jump squats and clapping pull-ups. And we do 4 sets of 4 reps at 10%. The medicine ball scoop, then we do 4 sets of 3 repetitions for the bench throw. Similar to the original research of Schmidtbleicher and Schlumberger and we do 4 sets of 3 repetitions for the jump squats, and the Clapping pull-ups you do it with your body weight or band assisted if you need to have some assistance to get up and clap.

And if we look at workout number three, the plyometric loading, here again we do the medicine ball scoop complexed with the medicine ball power drop, and then we do the counter movement drop jump and the medicine ball slam.

So the question stands out, what is a counter movement drop jump?

There are two different types of drop jumps. A drop jump is where you stand on a box you drop down and you jump over hurdle onto a new box or just in the air and land there is the so-called bounce drop jump, and there is the counter movement drop jump.

The bounce drop jump focuses on minimizing contact time, so ideally you want to have a so-called short stretch-shortening cycle of 180 milliseconds or less. So focus number one is minimizing contact time, and trying to jump as high as possible.

The counter movement drop jump focuses on maximizing jump height, so therefore the contact time is a bit longer most often it’s between 400 to 600 milliseconds, but that can change between the athletes.

But the idea is really try to maximize jump height, and for that you’ll see longer contact time and most often you see a bit more knee bent and hip bent in the counter-movement drop jump than in the bounce drop jump.

So medicine ball scoop, we do 4 sets of 4 at 1%. Again 1% of what?

Same thing here, the parent exercise would be the power clean, therefore you take 1% of your 1 RM power clean. So medicine ball power drop parent exercise would be the bench press. This is all outlined in the Excel that you can download from the membership. There you get all the parent exercises explained. So same here 4 sets of 4 at 1% and then for the counter movement drop jump, obviously it’s body weight.

And medicine ball slam again, 4 sets at 4 at 1% and the medicine ball slam we discussed it just now in workout number two, that would be the system mass of the pullup. So the body weight plus the additional load that you put on to do the pull-up.

That concludes the three workouts. If you download that PDF you get a bit more information here, the glossary, you can read about me and you can see some of the testimonial what my athletes my mentees and my former colleagues say.

Let’s move back and finish that presentation.

So what are the next steps?

Number one you download this program that we just looked at, number two you can join the membership, there you get the four week periodized training program, this was just the first week of the 4 weeks. In the membership you download the 4-week program. And please like and subscribe. If you subscribe, you get notified when the next program comes out, and if you want to check the previous program you can do so here.

I’ll see you next week with the next week program which is 4-day upper lower push pull to maximize strength and size.