More on ROM the purposefully reduced rep stroke
25 May 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The purposefully exaggerated range-of-motion requires the rep stroke begin with a pre-stretch. The poundage is then pushed as far as humanly possible and a lengthily lock-out amplifies the intensity of the muscle contraction. The purposefully normal ROM is just that; a normal repetition with no formal effort made to extend or reduce the specific length of the rep stroke. In classical core barbell and dumbbell exercise, a normal start position is assumed and the poundage pushed to a completed lockout. In the purposefully reduced ROM the rep stroke is broken into halves or thirds. Shortened rep training is becoming a lost art, but this ancient method was and is a valuable weapon in our progress-inducing arsenal of training tactics.
Iron Icon Paul Anderson is credited with inventing and perfecting the reduced-rep method. Anderson was a country boy with lots of commonsense and time on his hands and he thought one way to get stronger legs would be to lift heavy static weight. He filled two 55-gallon oil drums with 450-pounds of dirt each and ran a thick steel bar from one barrel to the other. Now he had a 1000-pounds barbell. He sat the whole contraption out back of the farmhouse and dug a deep hole, right underneath the bar. He stepped down into the hole and positioned himself; the bar was behind his head, on his shoulders in squat fashion. He stood erect with the massive weight a total of 3-inches for around 20-reps. He went away. A few days later he came back for another high-rep squat set using the same massive poundage once again using a purposefully reduced rep stroke.
Before he stepped into the hole he threw in a fair amount of dirt from the excavated pile. He now stood higher in the hole and he now had to move the weight 6-inches. He did his twenty reps and went away. He kept this up for a year until there was no more hole. Thus isotonic power rack training was born. This training mode was at its peak popularity amongst strength athletes in the sixties.
A common consensus emerged on method: cut the rep stroke length into thirds. Position the pins on the power rack in such a way as to define three separate zones: the 1st third, middle 3rd and from 2/3rd to lockout. If (for example) the athlete were to rack train the bench press, the procedure would run as follows. Set a flat bench inside a power rack and position the bottom pins so they hold a resting barbell as close to your supine chest as possible. You squeeze underneath. A second set of rack pins is set 1/3rd of the way along your rep stoke towards lockout. You have four pins, two set just above your chest and two more set six to ten inches above the low pins. The bar sits on the bottom pins. Inhale mightily and push the 1st rep upward until the barbell touches the top pin evenly. Lower immediately under control. Touch the bottom pins lightly and push upward for a second rep. Touch the top pin, lower and begin the 3rd rep. When the barbell contacts the top pin on the 3rd rep, instead of lowering, push against the top pin with all your might, shoot for a 5-second press-and-hold. Lower and scoot out.
You could stay in this rack position for several more sets or you could reset the pins to define and confine the second 3rd of the bench press rep stroke. Same procedure on the middle 3rd: three controlled reps and hold the last rep against the top pin for a 5-second count. On the final 3rd there is no top pin so we contract the lockout for 5-seconds. This procedure can be used on squats, overhead, inclined and flat bench presses, deadlifts, high pulls, cleans, nosebreakers, rows and on minor movements like the curl, side lateral raises and even abs. I prefer to break the rep stroke into half, 50%, instead of 3rds I find a 33% rep stroke too confining on the exercises that use the arms. Legs and back are less problematic. In addition I prefer 5-rep sets to 3-rep sets. Periodically rotate in purposefully reduced ROM exercise: this valuable training tactic is fantastic for building pure power and this style of training is extremely beneficial for strengthening tendons and ligaments. This is another valid arrow in the training quiver.
Tags:Popularity: 2% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
