Is there any benefit to low rep heavy weight training along with the explosive light weight training?

Here's a question from Rick Staples. Is there any benefit to low rep heavy weight training along with the explosive light weight training we do in fitness?  Good question Rick.

Rick is referencing our Fitness classes at the school.

My answer is no....and yes. It all depends.

It is interesting that a question that is so simple can be so complex as well.

I could write 20 to 30 pages about this but I'll try to give you a thumbnail sketch. It depends on a number of items.

• What are you trying to accomplish?
• Are you trying to be an Olympic or Power Lifter?
• What exercises are you doing? Are you using free weights or a (UGH!!) machine?
• How long have you been training?
• What do you consider heavy and what do you consider low rep?

My heavy will be a lot different than the average person. For example I can dead lift almost 3x my body weight (No belt, no knee wraps, no suit). Most people can barely do 1.5x. I can also take a weight that is about 30% of your one rep maximum and make it feel like it weighs a thousand pounds. Those of you who have trained with me know this.

Heavy for me is 85% or more of my one rep maximum in an exercise and low rep is no more than 5 repetitions.

When you are training this heavy you are not really training the muscles as much as you are training your central nervous system. That is something the vast majority of people who train do not understand. Training the same movement for three weeks straight tends to burn out your CNS slowing progress. We see this all the time in people who start weight training and their progress is great in the beginning then comes to a screeching halt when their nervous system isn't trained properly. Think of someone you know who has lifted for more than two years. I guarantee that their max efforts in their exercises hasn't changed for a long time. So what they do is start looking for new supplements and more exotic rep programs and workouts. What they need to do is change the angle and type of the exercise and do some auxiliary work. Oh and give their nervous system a break.

Here are some basic thoughts or principles to follow:

• Never train heavy movements when exhausted or after doing extended cardiovascular work.
• Never train a technical movement at the end of your workout.
• Don't train to failure.
• Rest more in between sets.
• Practice your lift. If you don't know how to do it correctly find someone who does (No, not your buddy). If you don't you'll never be as efficient (therefore as strong) as you could be in the movement. (Let me clue you in, 95%+ of all people I've seen train don't know how to do exercises correctly).
• Do not try to max out in your lift every day or even every week. Once a month is plenty.
• You should feel really energetic after working out.
• Almost all strength movements move vertically. This erodes lateral flexibility. That is, if you do a lot of dead lifts and squats you'll notice that the height of your round kicks diminishes greatly. There is a cure. Stretch.

Steve